Hello, internet. I'm back. I didn't mean to take a hiatus but I did. A big one. I have no idea what's going to happen with this blog, but for now I am just going to keep on typing. It's been 7 years this December so the sunk-cost mentality is kicking in. That, and nobody else out there is going to tell my story so I might as well keep doing it. If you are reading this, know that I love you and appreciate you still visiting my blog when clearly I don't deserve it. 

While I was out, I took some pictures. Below are some of the highlights from the last 9 months in reverse chronological order. The last one is of me, at Jazz Fest in New Orleans in the spring when I found a new use for my cleavage. (That sentence is a carrot for you to get all the way to the end.) Happy New Year!

I'm in the middle of making my first dress (more about that later) and really needed a better pincushion for removing all those pins while sewing. I made this ring one and love the way it turned out. It's made with the inside pull-ring of a milk carton- a cool up-cycling idea that came from this post on CRAFT:blog. I felted the pincushion instead of using stuffed fabric because I like the way the felted wool holds pins. It's stiffer stuff and helps cut down on the accidental pricking. And of course a tomato was the obvious choice. It works like a dream - couldn't be more pleased. And I kind of want to wear it all the time because it's so damn cute.

I'll be posting more pics on Roses Are Blue today if you're interested in how it was made.

Update: Tutorial posted.

We just bought our first brand new car. It's pretty exciting since neither Matthew or I have ever bought any vehicle that didn't languish on Craigslist for a few months. Since we're coming so late to new car ownership we needed to do a lot of research before we were able to pull the trigger. I thought that I would share some tips that we learned from the experience, in case any of you are in the market.

1. First, figure out what you can spend on new car. Don't bother actually drawing up a budget or anything. Just find the car of your dreams, figure out what the price is fully loaded, cut that price in half and that's about what you'll be able to afford. (A third if you're a public school teacher.)

2. Now that you know about what you can afford, research what kinds of rebates and offers are available out there. It's especially helpful if you can find out what offers have just expired the day before you started looking. That helps give you an extra whiff of bitterness during any negotiations.

3. Now comes the fun part, test drives! When you go to the dealerships make sure they know that you've never bought a car before. Oh my gosh, the are so nice to you! And say yes when they offer you coffee. Yum.

4. After test driving a bunch of cars you should be able to narrow it down now to the one that is going to work best for your situation. Sometimes the car you choose can come as a surprise. Like, say, a Mini Cooper could totally work for a family of four that carpools regularly. TOTALLY WORK. See also: leaving your practical spouse at home.

5. Now you should get quotes on the car you've picked from a few dealerships. If the lowest quote is not from your preferred dealership take it to them and see if they'll come down. They usually will. Unless you're us. And you're not us, so, awesome!

6. If you're trading in your current vehicle it's a good idea to make sure it's in the best possible shape before you get it appraised. Don't worry about getting the paperwork is in order though. Nothing brings the magic back to a marriage like a late-night search for a missing title right before you trade your car in.

7. Now that you've negotiated the best possible price and gotten to the point where you never wanted those stupid options that you dreamed about only a week ago anyway, it's time to fork over the cash and sign the loan papers. Obviously I don't have to tell you that you should read everything and have it explained to you before you sign it. But for fun, and extra challenge, if you have kids be sure to bring them with you for this part. Kids LOVE sitting around for hours listening to legal-ese. And signing something while one child screams in your ear and the other rolls around on the floor really helps you write faster.

8. Congratulations! You did it. Now you have a brand new car. Drive it home and enjoy that "brand new debt" smell.

We've had a lot of snow lately.

Which, you know, January, not completely unexpected.

But the amounts are way above average and it's been so cold that there's been very little melting in between storms. It's much more like Wisconsin winters or the lake-effect South Bend winters of my childhood when the snow would start falling in November and would be there until March. (End of March.) With some ice mounds not receding until April. (Late April.)

The storms have been devilish too. Coming in the morning or lasting all day so that school is cancelled. There have been a lot of snow days already. Thankfully, we have a hill in our yard so we have convenient sledding. These kids have sledded more this month than all of last winter.

There has been much more television as well. The kids are crazy for the new show "Dino Dan" on Nick. It's a Canadian show so we have been learning a lot about Canadian dinosaurs. Did you know that in Canada they call sledding "tobogganing?" Even if you don't have a toboggan? Crazy. (Canadian friends, feel free to correct me if this assumption I have made on the basis of one TV show about a poor delusional kid and his enabling friends is wrong.)

Why do kids eat snow constantly?

It makes me a little crazy because, good God, it has to be loaded with pollutants. But there is no stopping them.

At least they are both well hydrated.

The kids and I made some cool holiday stamps out of Model Magic clay. It was totally fun and now we have lots of cards and gift tags with seriously cute stamp art on them (Lowell's gingerbread man KILLS ME.) If you're interested I wrote up a tutorial over at Alpha Mom that has all the details for this easy but very satisfying craft.

So long, November! At least I didn't have to grow a mustache. (I did anyway, but not because I had to.) Thanks for hanging around. Thanks for reading all my posts. Thanks for leaving comments.

I always enjoy NaBloPoMo, at the end anyway. In the middle I hate it. But now I have warm and fuzzy feelings, and that's not just the beaujolais talking. NaBloPoMo always reminds me that I actually love my blog. That I really wouldn't know what to do without it. Did you know I often neglect what I love? It's a terrible habit. I usually end this month with a promise to write more. I usually blow that promise right away. No promises this year, just a wink. I'll try.

...is what I thought to myself earlier this evening. And here I almost did it. NOT SO FUNNY.

But I'm on it. I have nothing really to say other than damn, a hot toasty fire and a mug of tea will sure put you in the forgetting mood. 

Zzzzzzzz...

Is it just me or does this look like a fire in HD?

Goodnight.

If you are the type that loves to make something for people at the holidays you have to check out Sew, Mama, Sew's awesome Handmade Holidays guide. Every day is a different category with a round up of great tutorials of stuff to sew, knit, make, cook, etc. from around the crafty web. And they also have stuff to buy in the guide too, thankfully, as the road to panicked last-minute gift buying is paved with handmade intentions. Ahem.

Willa really did this. I often wonder if she has a writer on staff somewhere.

We had a great Thanksgiving yesterday with friends and family. As we went into the evening there was a planned sleepover but only one child was game. I had to bring Willa the partypooper home so the night was cut a little short. I was grumpy about that, but the silver lining? I finished the hat. And now it's on my head which is good because baby, it's cold outside.

Hand turkey FTW. I love that Lowell drew us inside the turkey. Turnabout is fair play, no?

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

I'm digging this Ben Folds - Nick Hornby collaboration. I was skeptical, but goddamn, I LOVE THIS SONG.

Trying to finish this hat before it gets cold again this week. I knit so sloooooowly. Case in point, this is from a "knit this in a couple hours!"-type pattern book. I'm on week three.

When I was One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three
I was hardly me.
When I was Four,
I was not much more.
When I was Five,
I was just alive.
But now I am Six,
I'm as clever as clever,
So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.

-A.A. Milne 

Happiest of birthdays to you, beautiful boy.

Look. If, say, someone in your family requests strawberry frosting for their birthday cake then I have the recipe for you:

Sprinkles' Strawberry Frosting

I took the advice in the comments and simmered the puree down first to concentrate the strawberry flavor. The frosting was ridiculously delicious. I let the kids have some with their breakfast this morning (because I am the greatest mom on the planet) which resulted in major num-num noises. So good.

I came home from running around all day from errand to errand and noticed that I had a message on our home phone. (Yes, we still have a home phone. With an answering machine. I also churn butter and use lye soap.) I played it and was startled to hear my own voice coming out of the speaker. I listened but not really to the words because I was struck with panic. I had no recollection of leaving this message and that meant I must have called when I was running around and not even remembered it. I started mentally running through a list of neurological disorders that might be the culprit (thanks, House!) until I heard, "okay, and I wanted to wish Lowell an early happy birthday, so call me back." Then I thought, "Wow, I have really lost, no wait, that was Kara." Everyone, EVERYONE, always tells me that my sister, Kara, and I sound exactly alike. And I can kind of hear it, but not really, because I am me and I can't really hear what my voice sounds like except on a recording. Now when people say that I will just say "RIGHT? I know, it's freaky."

Willa has the slowest growing hair on the planet. In the great scheme of things, this is no big deal at all, and I love her short hair - most people assume we cut it that way. But now her hair, at least the hair in the back, is long enough for pigtails. Oh my freaking GOD how I have waited (and waited, and waited) for this day. She ripped them out almost immediately, of course, but not before whipping them and twirling them around with her fingers while she stared in the mirror. She seemed almost as thrilled by them as I was.

Two days ago I noticed that my husband had brought the mail in and that there was a Dwell Studio catalog on the top of the pile. For a second I wondered "hmm, how'd I get on that mailing list?" and then went on my merry way. Tonight I noticed it again and decided to pick it up and when I turned it over I saw that, no, it was not a Dwell Studio catalog but my copy of Anthology magazine, Issue No. 1. And then I hypervenilated, ran up to my room, slammed the door, and screamed for everyone to leave me alone.

Here it is:

These dark days of glossies folding left and right have left a magazine-shaped hole in my heart. This little beauty is helping to fill that void. It even helps me to feel a little better about the demise of so many of my favorite titles because the indie mag movement seems to be getting stronger than ever with the extra breathing room. If you loved Domino or Blueprint you should run out and get this. Or better yet subscribe. It's a gem and I'm already anxiously awaiting the next issue.

I have posted 17 days in a row and am only now resorting to a cat video. I RULE. Here's one to get you into the holiday spirit.

Is it weird that my kids know every word to this song?

Willa working it. It's all her own creation, of course. That's a small sword in her hand on the right there. Very Alexander McQueen. The dress is tucked into her undies, which I'm pretty sure Junya Watanabe did in the fall Paris shows. Personally, I think she has a future. But then, I am her mom.

Also, NaBloPoMo, day 15. Halfway.

The other day as we were having lunch at a depressing strip mall deli near a Verizon store where I had dragged the kids, Lowell looked up at me and said, squinching his face thoughtfully, "I think I'll draw this in my journal tomorrow." I immediately had the strange, even slightly unpleasant thought that probably my husband, other family members, and several of my friends have had: oh sh*t, this is going to be blogged.

In Lowell's kindergarten class each kid keeps a journal where they think of a story from the last couple days, draw a picture of it, and then explain it to their group. It's part of a literacy program and when I first heard about it I thought it was a marvelous thing. Now, I am not so sure. From what I can gather he has been choosing some pretty funny details of his day to write about and someday (soon, parent-teacher conferences are this week) I will have to sit there and experience his version of our family life as his teacher explains his drawings to me. Yeah, yeah, irony is rich, blah, blah. (Stop laughing.) But I am definitely feeling a little nervous. It's apparant (daily) that he has inherited the embellishment and exaggeration genes that plague our family. And the boy loves to go for a punchline. Needless to say I'll be bringing his teacher the biggest box of chocolates I can find.

Seriously though, I am also a little thrilled when he says he's going to journal something. One of the best things about having a blog is that it often makes me observe things a little more closely when I think I might write about them. I pay attention more, I take in the details, and feel a little more present in even the most mundane moments. It's lovely to think that he is experiencing that, and looking at the world as not only his reality, but also as his story.

Very nearly forgot to post. I'm sitting here knitting a hat and watching "Bridget Jones's Diary" for the hundredth thousandth time because I know how to party on a Saturday night. I'm trying to think of a detail from my day that I might turn into a decent little vignette but ah, fuggit. I am going to go back to the hat and listening for flaws in Renee Zellweger's accent. Ta!

I was inspired to make this leaf wreath by a beautiful leaf gradient I saw as part of the 10/10/10 group on Flickr. As soon as I saw it I thought a leaf gradient would make a great wreath. When the leaves really started to change around here I picked up as many colors of maple leaves as I could find. I put them in books to press them (finally - a good use for my out-of-date Chicago Manual of Style) and then yesterday I glued them all on a form I cut out of some cardboard. It was really easy and took maybe an hour from start to finish. I took pictures as I went along, so if you're interested in making one or just seeing the process, click below for a tutorial. This is also cross-posted on Roses Are Blue.

First, I figured out how big I wanted the wreath to be and cut out a circle wreath form from a cardboard scrap. Once I had the form I started to plan out the gradient, layering the leaves starting with green through yellow and orange.

I went along trying different sizes and colors until I got the gradient I wanted.

Then I moved the leaves one by one off the form, snipped off the stem, and laid them out around the form in the order I wanted them.

I wasn't sure what kind of glue I was going to use. Hot glue would have been overkill since the leaves were pretty thin and brittle. I thought I'd probably use plain craft glue but, being the impatient type, didn't really want to wait around while it dried. So I pulled out my trusty glue dots and gave them a try. They worked perfectly.

If you've never used these definitely give them a try. They are magic. They're especially good for kids crafts when you don't want to deal with glue mess.

I put two or three glue dots directly on the leaf, depending on the size, and then pressed the leaf down on the cardboard, layering as I went from red through the spectrum to green.

Once the form was filled I was done. I took it straight to my front door and hung it up. It was light enough for me to just use some sticky tack.

We have a storm door in front, so I wasn't worried about wind, but you could easily hot glue a loop of ribbon or wire to hang it more substantially.

I'll be curious to see how it weathers. I don't expect it to last more than a season or store well. You could preserve the leaves with a couple different techniques besides just pressing for a longer-lasting wreath. I'll probably just make a new one next year. It was totally gratifying for not much work. My favorite kind of craft.

So, I made a cool wreath today and had every intention of posting the whole process here and on the craft blog but then I went to a planning meeting at Willa's school for a winter craft day and then from there went to a friend's craft night and hi, I like crafts.

I'll post it tomorrow. Teaser shot:

Today I was testing out a new boombox that we bought for the kids' room. (By the way, good God, what are we calling them now? I can't believe I can never come up with anything better than "boombox.") It has an iPod dock so I set mine to shuffle, plugged it in and let it play. Right away this song's shreddingly delicious opening solo came pealing out of the speakers and I had one of those Proustian jolts back to my past. This time: San Francisco, 1993, my old apartment. I'm smoking and watching the fog pour down into the Lower Haight.

I've been noticing as I get older that, paradoxically, these moments of pure memory are becoming clearer. I'll be, say, going over my grocery list in my head and a song, or a smell, or a sight, any of the usual triggers, presents itself and instantly I'm filled with a longing so intense that it brings tears to my eyes. It's not like this didn't happen when I was younger but lately it seems stronger and sharper, and even when the memory is a happy one, it can be just on the edge of unpleasant.

I was reading recently that "nostalgia" was once considered a disease, a kind of severe homesickness. I think this is the right word for it then. A longing for a place that only exists in your brain to where there's no hope of return. Exiled in the present, I can only turn the volume up and sing along. Okay, and play air guitar.

Yesterday I posted about linear time, today I am posting about the weather. I like to write about things that are totally within my control, obviously.

It snowed this morning. Lowell and I were just about to walk to school when I saw something unexpected in my peripheral vison. I peered out the front door and saw a whole bunch of leaves blowing down in the wind. I thought, "Wait, white leaves? That's weird..." My brain then quickly made the shift that it couldn't possibly be white leaves, it had to be pieces of paper. Yes, that's it, uniform pieces of paper are raining down from the sky. No, no, no, that can't be right, brain! So we settled upon ash. It had to be ashes from someone burning leaves next door or something. Then Lowell looked up from putting on his shoes and said "HEY! IT'S SNOWING!"

Oh, yeah, right. Snow. Forgot about that stuff.

Move over summer solstice. You have nothing on End-Of-Daylight-Savings Day.

Saturday night I checked to see if Matthew had turned his clock back before bed. He hadn't so I made a mental note of it and went to sleep. When the children, those lovely songbirds of the morn, came traipsing into our bedroom today I looked over at the clock to see that it read "5:35." Good God. If it read 5:35 that meant it was actually 4:35 and of course that's what time I could expect to be waking for the rest of the week. This is an EXTREMELY unfortunate way to start any day. Even more unfortunate than just being woken at 5:35. We finally got the kids, through a mixture of firm words, outright threats, and abject begging, to stay in their rooms until the clock said 6:30, which of course, I calculated, was actually 5:30. I went downstairs with them at that point and was basically in tears. Until I saw the kitchen wall clock. An analog piece of crap that runs off one AA battery that I didn't bother turning back the night before. The big hand was on the 7 and the little hand was on the 6, AKA 7:30. Confused yet? I stood there staring at it and realized that Matthew's new alarm clock falls back all by itself. A feature I must have known about since I bought the damn thing (FYI, compulsive manual reader, here). So I got to start this dumb day with double the time angst. Really not okay. Either all the clocks in the world need to change themselves for Daylight Savings or none of them should have this functionality. Otherwise we are headed to chaos. CHAOS, I TELL YOU. Of course, I only have to get up at 5:30, not 4:30, for the next week so, hey, bonus!

And that was just the beginning. It's now only 9:37 PM and I feel like I have lived half my lifetime in this day. Do you know how many words a (nearly) 6-year-old can compulsively spell out to you given an extra hour? Or, with those extra minutes, how many times a 3-year-old can shriek directly into your ear that she does not want to wear her coat? Or her hat? Or her shoes? Or any clothes in general that are not softy-soft? People, let's just say that number contains many, many zeroes. Every single time I checked my watch today it was followed by a sotto voce string of swear words. And of course there was all that early darkness to look forward to. Yay! Thanks a lot, farmers! Just happy that this dumb day with its dumb time change is over. Dumb time and its stupid artificial linear construct. Grumble. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Oh Zenyatta! You came so, so close.

If you watched the Breeders' Cup Classic today then you know already that the wonder mare, Zenyatta, lost by a nose to Blame. Absolute heartbreaker of a race. Her last race before retirement after winning all 19 of her previous starts. Ach. This is why I should give up being a horseracing fan for good. Not because of all the other (valid, serious) reasons, but because my heart can't take it anymore. It's worse than rooting for the Mets. Someone please remind me of this before the first Saturday in May next year.