Bath/Swim Shirt Take 1

When my brother and I were little, Mom made us terry cloth shirts/robes to wear after swimming lessons. The other day I bought a beach towel and thought I'd try to make one for my guy. I figured I needed to make it large considering terry doesn't stretch. I used a very worthy 2T sized shirt for my pattern =). You can see the finished result. I was so excited to try it on him and it STILL didn't fit despite the large size. After thinking about it for a day I have decided to make it a robe. It won't have quite as much fabric as a typical robe, but I don't want to trash it! I"ll post the finished project once I figure it out...

homemade natural insect repellent

I finally got my order in yesterday from Mountain Rose Herbs and was so excited to get mixing up some recipes from my body care book. First on the agenda was definitely bug spray. It is spring in the Northeast. It was a simple blend of 1/2 cup soybean oil (known for its natural insect repelling qualities), 15 drops each of catnip, lemongrass and geranium essential oils and 10 drops of eucalyptus essential oil (or basil essential oil - I bought eucalyptus as it is used in many other recipes in the book). I also bought the bottle that you see the finished product in from Mountain Rose Herbs - great website - they have a huge selection of herbs, oils, teas, containers, etc. You mix the ingredients in the bottle, shake vigorously to mix and let sit for an hour before use for max potency. You have to shake the bottle before each use. I'm really hopeful about this as I detest little annoying bugs and hate to use poisonous sprays on myself, and definitely needed a safe solution for Charlie. We shall see how it works! A side note - catnip smells very weird! The other oils kind of mask this, but a study found catnip essential oil to be more effective then DEET.

Mama's Little Helper

So back to the post 2 days ago... there's something so cruel about getting new fabric and having to go through the process of washing and ironing it before you can dive into your project! Here's my son, trying to be helpful by digging the fat quarters out of the laundry basket and bringing them to me as I tried to gather them together and start a wash. It turned into a fun game of "cover the room in fabric and play hide and seek with it"

Cinco de Mayo

The Madphrey Margarita..........

2 oz tequila (reposado)

1 oz freshly squeezed lime juice

3/4 oz grand marnier

ice cubes

(salt rim of glass if desired)

have your one year old give it a good shake.....

ENJOY!

for all of you who quilt....

... look at this site! Limited fabric availability, but wow would I feel spoiled!

http://www.stitchsimple.com/

This site is also extremely cool!

http://www.spoonflower.com/welcome

the never-ending vest

Have you ever had a project that just won't end? As much as I loved making this vest and was very excited about it, it is not the best project to put down for a few weeks (ok, maybe months) at a time and then pick back up. Especially considering the fact that I am not a great note taker and thus when I picked the project back up again I had to "read" the piece I was working on to figure out where I was in the pattern. Not fun. It made picking it back up again painful at times. I started this project in October just after I finished a cute green sweater for Charlie and I was entering the time of year where I really get the knitting bug. It wasn't the type of project that I could easily work on while doing something else - the pattern required attention, and often at the end of the day when I had time to sit down and work on it, I was too tired. Had it been a project without cables I probably would've been done with it in a few weeks. Something I will try to remember for projects in the near future. Thank goodness my little man is a peanut and he still fits in the size I made for him, though I did make it a bit bigger to maximize wear-time. I'm not sure he'll get much spring-time wear out of it as the temperature inevitably rises. Maybe it will still fit in the fall???

Happy Birthday!

I almost wasn't going to post this, but it was so enjoyed by giver and receiver I thought I should.  My darling baby brother turned 30 yesterday.  YES - that means I am a "thirtysomething."........  For his b-day I was trying to think of something nice, thoughtful, cute, clever.....  What I came up with turned out to be just as much of a gift for him as it was for me.  I took a piece of paper and using my paper cutter neatly sliced it up into 30 pieces (half length-wise then 15 cuts).  I wrote a memory on each piece - put them in a ziploc and tucked them into his card.  I really had the best time doing this.  I dreamt it up some sleepless night probably 2 weeks before Nick's birthday, so I had a few ideas in mind before pen actually hit paper, but I was shocked at the memories that came out of the pen the actual day I sat down to do this.  Things I hadn't thought of for YEARS!  For instance... I was struck by this memory of Nick and me receiving this beautiful pop-up book for Christmas from someone our dad worked with.  We were probably 5 and 7.  It was a shared gift.  We begged to differ.  I remember we fought over that thing like it was Hungry Hungry Hippos or something.   Memories like that are strangely so precious.  I love my brother so much - we are busy in our daily lives right now, but how lucky are we to go through life with someone (and for me the only one) with such similar genetics - such similar life experiences (until we fly the nest)?  At first I thought I should buy him a new shirt or tie for work for his big day.  I'm so glad for my insomnia........  I loved the experience probably more than he did, though he called me to assure me he loved it as well.