All from Mark’s first two months of life…I just can’t get over how little and cute he was!!
love my mei tai! 🙂 (Ellie, same pose)
my two favorite men in the whole world!
Mark’s first long-ish independent nap – in the chair, in the kitchen, when he was 3 weeks old, while I made braised goat for Auntie Meggan and Selah. It was also the first meal I made by myself, post-Mark! 🙂
Presenting: Mark’s first birthday quilt!
I designed it myself, based on a quilt in the book, Modern Quilts from the Blogging Universe. The original quilt has just one neutral background color and only one size of block (finishing at 6″ square). I added the stripes in the background fabric and added two more block sizes, finishing at 9″ square and 18″ square. I also decreased the size, ending up with a finished size of 42″x60″.
For the back, I continued the stripe theme but used big pieces of the prints from the front, adding some solid triangles (the other half of the half-square triangles that I made for the front).
After sewing the front, I thought it was lacking a bit of something (movement?) and so I decided to quilt it in a spiral. This was the first time I’ve done a spiral and it was pretty hard (as evidenced by my terribly wobbly lines and super uneven spacing). I also had the problem of deciding what color of quilting thread to use. I ended up switching between blue, orange, and green thread to quilt it, changing colors every time I got to a new background color. This was annoying at first but once the spiral was well established, I just did all the orange, then finished the green, then finished the blue so that eliminated much more bobbin switching.
see the thread color switch?
I deliberately started it off-center, knowing that I wouldn’t get it perfectly centered if I tried. I like the feeling of the spiral falling off the rectangle in different places. I think I’ll try spirals again because I love the end result. I just need more practice!
I think the spiral is easier to see on the back.
I had the same problem with binding as I did with quilting – what binding color to choose to go with such strong stripes? In the end, I used the same solution as quilting – three colors. I’ve also never done a color-blocked binding before but it was surprising easy. I’m not showing you the other side of the binding, which didn’t end up so perfect. I had to talk myself out of a lot of seam ripping and restitching to fix it (it is, after all, for a one-year-old).
I had a surprising hard time finding different prints that had a colored (not white) background and which read, “boy”. In the end, I did compromise on a few with white backgrounds, like the green turtles and these puzzle pieces which I adore.
love the words on the puzzle pieces – hope, love, curious…
My “centerpiece” print was these giraffes, which amazingly have the perfect colors of blue, orange and green in them. I actually purchased the solids before realizing that the giraffes fit perfectly! (The solids are Kona Ocean, Orange, and Sour Apple.)
It was harder than I thought it would be to rotate the triangles in a way that was pleasing and didn’t repeat too much.
Close up, here’s the whole quilt, front and back:
In the end, I wish I had used all small triangles on the front rather than adding the bigger triangles. I added the bigger ones, wanting to be able to see the front prints a little bit better. But part way through sewing the front, I figured out the design for the back (which I love, far more than the front) and in the end, could have kept all the front triangles small. Oh well – I suppose that’s the way the quilting process goes. I just keep on learning! This was the first quilt I’d ever designed myself and it was an interested learning process for sure. Now I’m itching to work on another one!
first nap with his new quilt!
Welcome to Snow Day #427. I never thought I’d say this (because what teacher doesn’t love a snow day?) but we’re getting tired of them. At this point, we’re over our allocated days and there’s the possibility of losing vacation days or going longer in June. So enough already, winter!
To make this snow day seem special rather than just annoying, we made bagels!
Ellie likes to help add the toppings.
garlic cheddar for Nik and me at lunch (amazing!)
poppy seed, sesame seed, and everything, all for the freezer
After lunch, Nik worked his magic with glasses and water, made a glass xylophone, and played Fur Elise! 🙂
Here’s an outtake for some Ellie xylophone action.
And, as much fun as we’ve had today, here’s hoping for no more snow days!
After a three-week break (because I had nothing to report), I’m happy to announce two finishes today!
1. I finally finished Mark’s birthday quilt, only 2 months late! I sewed the last of the binding down this morning. I’ll do a full blog post soon but here’s a sneak peak for now.
That’s his cheesy smile for the camera grin, just recently invented! 🙂
2. This week, I sewed pillow covers for both Ellie and Mark (to be used in the future). Although not technically a WIP (because I cut into new fabric, etc to make them), they’ve been on my to-sew list for months so they feel like a WIP. I’ll do a full blog post about these also, answering perfectly logical questions such as, “Why didn’t you just buy them pillows?” But, in the meantime, here they are. Ellie chose the zipper colors! For each of them, there’s one to be stuffed with wool and then one as the protective outer covering.
I’m linking up with “Finish It Up Friday” at Crazy Mom Quilts.
The [Encouragingly Short] List of WIPs (as of 2/28/14) – down from 15!
This is my second post for The Classics Club. I’ll be reading one classic book a month for the next 4-5 years. Here’s the list of all the books I’ll be reading. I’ll try not to include too many spoilers in my review but I may need to discuss some in order to fully review the book. I’ll warn you if I’m going to mention one. Â
Silas Marner by George Eliot (real name: Mary Anne Evans)
still nursing, still reading
Review: My mom loves this book. I bought it many years ago, wanting to discover why she loved it so much. I’m not sure why it took this Classics Club challenge to get me to finally open it but I’m glad I did.
First lesson I learned from this book: Don’t read the introduction to the novel before you read the novel. I’m a fairly obsessive reader (i.e. I read everything, the acknowledgements, [skim] the notes, usually even the copyright page) on my way through the book. So if it’s starts with an introduction by another author, I just read it. Unfortunately, in this case, the introduction contained just about every major plot point and before I realized what I was reading, I knew the whole plot line of the story, including all spoilers except for one which isn’t all that important and isn’t revealed until almost the very end of the story. So let that be a lesson to you too!
Overall, I must say I was a little bit bored while reading. I blame the introduction for this more than anything. I didn’t have any reason to keep reading because I read a nice seven page summary to start off the book. The power of a child’s love and the themes of rebirth and redemption were strong and compelling.
I have to admit to no real love for any of the characters. They were all pretty one-dimensional (in particular, the female characters) and I had a hard time connecting with any of them. I think I liked Dolly Winthrop the best. I hope I can be as kind, generous, and compassionate as she was if I see others in need. (And hand-me-down clothes were useful even 150 years ago!) I found the Godfrey character the most interesting, particularly how he changed over the years of his marriage to Nancy.
I am intrigued/confused by the religious community that Silas Marner was thrown out of at the beginning of the book. Was it a cult? Or a really extreme sect of the mainstream Christian denomination at the time?
Finally, reading this book made me grateful that I have grown up as a female in the 20th/21st century United States (as opposed to Victorian England).
P.S. Last week, I was going through some old books and made this awesome discovery!
See the name at the top? She’s my great-grandmother who I was named after!
Here’s an easy and gluten-free way to use up leftover rice. The last time I made this, I went searching on the internet to see if I could find any other fun recipes for rice pudding. I had a really hard time finding any that called for leftover rice. Almost all the recipes had you start with uncooked rice and cook it on the stove top – WAY too much work!
This rice pudding is really easy and you can use any kind of rice in it. I’ve made it with brown jasmine rice but of course, it’s the most decadent with white rice. The last time I made it, we used leftover sushi rice from when we made sushi. Nik hadn’t added the vinegar/salt/sugar mixture to the leftover rice, which made it perfect for rice pudding!
Rice Pudding (using leftover rice)
from my mother
makes one square pan (usually 8×8 or 9×9) (double for a 9×13)
1 ½ C cooked rice*
½ C raisins (optional – I love them!)
Spread the rice and raisins (if using) evenly into the pan.
3 large eggs
2 C milk
ÂĽ – ½ C sugar (Use the lesser amount if serving with syrups – see below.)
½ T vanilla
½ tsp salt
Put the eggs in a medium bowl and beat well. Stir in the milk, sugar, salt, and vanilla and then pour it over the rice. Bake at 325 for 25 minutes.
Take it out of the oven , stir it, and then sprinkle it generously with cinnamon. Bake for an additional 25-30 minutes, or until the pudding doesn’t really jiggle anymore in the middle and a knife put into the middle comes out clean. (When making a 9×13 pan, it will probably take closer to an hour or more to finish.)
This is best served right  out of the oven. I like to serve it with maple syrup or peach syrup on the side (hence my note about reducing the sugar above). It’s also good eaten later after it has cooled but the rice does continue to absorb the milk/egg mixture. So it becomes less pudding-like as it sits. I like to heat it up when eating it as leftovers and it’s still delicious.
*updated 2/27/14 – So my friend David and I had a discussion on Facebook about this where he questioned my “leftover rice” title – saying, “no need for the rice to be leftover.” He usually cooks rice if he wants to make rice pudding. And to be honest, it never before occurred to me that you could actually cook some rice and then make pudding. I only ever make it if I have leftover rice to use up! 🙂 So, if you want to make this but don’t have leftover rice, go right ahead and cook some up!
This is my mom’s brownie recipe. It’s super easy and just about as fast to make as a brownie mix, but so much better. When I was in high school, we used to triple it and bake it in a turkey roasting pan for youth group. Even with that many, they were gone so fast! They’re absolutely heavenly when warm but stay good for a day or two out on the counter and last a long time in the freezer (if you can leave them there that long). I like to eat them frozen even! They’re also good with peanut butter on top, which makes them really healthy, obviously. Enjoy!
Brownies
from my mom
makes 24 brownies (or more or less, depending on how you cut them)
the amounts in parentheses are for a 1/3 batch, when you’re really craving brownies but you don’t want to make a whole pan and you’re also almost out of cocoa powder. Yes, this was me a while ago! 🙂
1 C butter (1/3 C, which is 5 and 2/3 T)
Âľ C cocoa powder (1/4 C)
1 Âľ C sugar (1/3 +1/4 C)
1 tsp vanilla (scant 1/2 tsp)
Melt the butter. Mix in the cocoa powder, sugar, and vanilla until all lumps are gone and the batter is smooth.
3 large eggs (1)
Beat in each egg thoroughly, one at a time, make sure to fully incorporate each one. By the end of the third egg, all the butter/cocoa powder mixture should be fully incorporated. Make sure to scrape off the spoon into the bowl before you finish stirring (to get off any butter/cocoa that’s not mixed in).
1 ÂĽ C all-purpose flour (1/3 C + 1 T + 1 tsp)
½ tsp baking powder (scant ¼ tsp)
½ tsp salt (scant ¼ tsp)
Add the flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix until just combined.
Spread evenly in a greased 9×13 pan (or a loaf pan if making the 1/3 amount)* and bake in a 350 oven for 25-30 minutes until just set (less time for the smaller amount.) Try not to over-bake. If you like your brownies on the fudge side, then you could even under-bake them a bit.
*1/4 C chopped walnuts (optional)
If using, sprinkle them over the surface of the brownies before baking. I love them with walnuts but am so lazy that I haven’t bothered to add them for years. Perhaps this is a good reason to make another batch! 🙂
Cut them in the pan and serve. Try not to eat the whole pan, like our covenant group almost did the other night.
Last summer, we spent two weeks in rural western Montana for my family reunion. Before we left, I decided that I would completely unplug myself from the internet while we were there. Although my dad did have internet at the house, I figured that it would be good for me to have that unconnected break. I was inspired to do this by an essay in Bread and Wine by Shauna Niequist, in which she relates how much better a Mexican vacation was because their cell phones just didn’t have any reception. Before we left, I set up an auto-reply in my email saying that I would be away from email for two weeks and to call me if there was anything urgent.
When we got to my dad’s place in Montana, we discovered that we didn’t have any cell phone reception either. We had to drive about a half hour away in order to get any. And so, unintentionally, I really cut myself off.  Although I felt a bit twitchy at times (particularly when watching my siblings checking their email and Facebook accounts), on the whole, it really wasn’t all that hard to be disconnected from the internet for those two weeks. I did write some blog posts in advance (like this one, this one, and this one) and scheduled them to post while I was gone, so my two week absence wouldn’t be all that noticeable (blog-wise) while I was gone. Because I was with all my immediate family (25 of us!), I didn’t feel lonely or disconnected at all!
Fast forward a few months. Last Monday, our internet connection broke. We weren’t able to get a technician here to fix it until Friday afternoon and so for five days, I had another [this time unplanned] internet sabbatical. The internet miraculously worked for about five minutes on Tuesday evening so I was able to read my emails, enough to see that I needed to call a couple people. And then Thursday evening, the internet again worked for a few minutes, long enough to let me read through my emails but not long enough to do anything else (such as reply to anyone, look at my Feedly feed, or check Facebook.) So it wasn’t five days of absolutely no Internet but pretty close to it.
So, what did I learn from these two internet sabbaticals?
1a. The internet sucks way more of my time out of my day than I like to admit that it does. I don’t even have the temptation of a smart phone (i.e. instant everywhere internet access) and I still was WAY more productive than I usually am. For example, the kitchen was beautifully clean all week!
1b. On the other hand, I wasn’t able to accomplish some tasks that I really needed to do – particularly related to some of my church responsibilities. It’s difficult to function when all business is conducted on the web and you’re not there.
1c. I realized that part of the “I’m more productive without the internet” story is not just the time that I waste surfing the web but also that I wasn’t quite so distracted because I didn’t have the temptation to “just check to see if I’ve gotten any email”. So I remained better focused on my task at hand.
1d. The moral of this story:Â I do need internet access but I also need stronger boundaries on my time as to when and how I access the resources and/or time eaters of the internet.
2. Storage on the cloud is great until you can’t access the cloud. Thankfully, we don’t use the cloud exclusively (i.e. we also save our documents and pictures to our home PC) and so I’ve been able to get to my recipes and other documents I’ve needed. I prepared for this when we went to Montana by printing out recipes I’d need and that sort of thing. But this second unplanned sabbatical would have been pretty difficult if everything was in the cloud. And last week, I did wish that I had some information that I have stored only in my email – nothing major but still annoying.
3. Facebook is a double-edged sword. I love Facebook for being able to keep up with my friends and ]in particular] my family who are flung far and wide. However, it’s really easy to read my family’s status updates and then feel like I know what’s going on and so not reach out to make a personal connection to them. This wasn’t a problem in Montana (since we were all together) but last week, I definitely felt pretty isolated and out of it. In either situation, I didn’t don’t do a good job of reaching out via phone to fix the disconnection problem.  On the other hand, I especially have missed having Skype. My sister and I talk a lot on Skype and it’s fun for our kids to be able to see each other that way.
4. I’m pretty good at all or nothing boundaries but not so good at loosey-goosey ones. It’s much easier for me to say, “don’t turn on the computer until after lunch” rather than say, “I’ll turn on in the computer in the morning but I’ll only use it for a few minutes and only when the kids aren’t in the room and only if I’ve gotten everything else done that I need to do”. So primarily, I’m going to try to stick to a “no computer until quiet time” policy from now on with exceptions as needed.
Anyone else out there taken an internet sabbatical recently (intentionally or unintentionally)? How was it for you? Any lessons learned you want to share?
Come over and we’ll share our cute cake with you! 🙂
(This is my favorite easy delicious chocolate cake recipe. One batch is perfect for a round cake pan.)
Salmon and Souvlaki 