Ramble On

last minute finished monster for my youngest

Hand Knits ready to wrap

The Christmas spirit has not caught me until late and frankly, I'm a little sad that tomorrow it's all over because I just didn't get into this year. I don't know if it was the weather or what but this year has been very mellow for me and sort of shocking (meaning that I've been shocked on how late in the year it's become).

Lights!

Last night we went to see Christmas lights, something we started to do last year and have decided that this will be our yearly family tradition as we never really started any for ourselves. Tonight the kids and I are going to bake some sugar cookies from my husband's great grandmother's recipe. I think these might become a tradition as well, of course I had to modify the recipe to make it gluten free but it worked out super well. If I get his permission I might post it (of course it is NOT SCD legal). I found that I'm perfectly okay eating some of them (and by some I mean 2). I'm grateful for these small sense of normalcy that I have found this year but I'm still careful to not stray far from the diet.

Teacher's Gifts

Cranberry sauce is one of my favorite things about the holidays. The last couple of years I felt bad for myself as the dish was passed around the table but this year I decided to take matters into my own hands and come up with a recipe so I could eat some too.

I had a couple of requirements:
1) It still had to be a little tart, I wanted it to actually taste like cranberries
2) I had to be able to make it the night before.

A word of caution: this is an advanced SCD recipe. Cranberries have tiny little seeds and skins, if you don't think your gut can handle this please don't try! You could try straining the sauce through a fine mesh strainer but I do not know how that will work out. 



SCD Legal Holiday Cranberry Sauce
serves 12
2 12oz bags of fresh cranberries
2 cups orange juice
1 cup honey
1 tbs cinnamon (optional)
2 tbs orange zest (optional)

Rinse your cranberries and check for any rotten ones or stems or anything that looks like you don't want to eat it.

In a large pot combine everything and bring to a boil over medium heat, reduce to a simmer. Stir occasionally until all the cranberries have burst.

Turn off the heat the sauce will get thick as it cools. Store in the fridge until you're ready to eat it.

That's it.

You can add whatever spices you want, orange zest, cinnamon, ginger to name a few, which is why I listed the cinnamon and orange zest is optional but these things really make it taste special. 

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... at least sicker than I thought. I'm on antibiotics because my left tonsil has been swollen now since April. Yes April. I had the PA look at it last time I was in for a med check and she said it was fine, apparently the doctor said it's gone too long and he wants to try to get the swelling down since it has been bothering me.

Eldest wants the Skylanders game. We already bought the stealth elf figure (he also requested) the game itself is 70 bucks, apparently it's worth it but he better freaking LOVE the game seriously. I haven't ordered it yet, I'm waiting for some of my swagbucks amazon gift cards to show up then I'll be able to get it for 40, which is much easier to swallow.

Middle Girlie is already done. She asked for this Hello Kitty megablocks set and this little castle.

I also bought them a bunch of things that I refer to as "things they didn't know they wanted" books, craft kits, candy, you know fun things. I actually want to just get started wrapping everything but I'm going to wait until December.

Also in December Eldest turns 10. 10. Seriously, double digits.

I've actually never made these before I must have gotten the wrong type of applesauce cause these took a heck of a lot more cinnamon that I thought it would. I'm very happy with them though. I painted them with white paint so they would look like they were frosted cookies. I had the idea to make food ornaments to decorate a tree in the kitchen.


When we happened to get a Rosemary tree I was super excited since it went with my theme. So I dried out some thinly sliced orange slices in the oven over night and hung those along with the apple sauce ornaments on the rosemary tree. I still had a little bit of the brown ribbon left over (that I also used on the popcorn wreath) and tied that on the top. I'm sorta in love with it, and it smells really good!

These are actually random boxes we had around the kitchen. Some cereal boxes, granola bar box etc.
I cut off the "flaps" wrapped them leaving about 2 inches overlap at the opening, tucked that in, punched some holes and threaded a ribbon through. Much cheaper than buying gift bags, and much more sturdy!

The kids were thrilled, candy canes for breakfast!!!

We made gingerbread houses, from a kit, of course. I'm not brave enough yet to try to bake them myself. Someday I'd like to try but this year it worked out fine. I found a kit that had five little houses instead of one big one, pretty perfect since there are five of us. Hubby is going to decorate his later on, he's down visiting some family. The kids stayed home because they were all in various stages of a cold.

November is going by too fast! I'm trying to get through my Christmas knitting which is going slowly compared to how fast (i feel) the month is going. Which doesn't make any sense but it is what it is.

Mom's sweater, one sleeve done and obviously unblocked.

A scarf for the bebe, the pink one is not pictured, which was for middle girlie. I was able to finish these in an hour respectively. I wish all my knitting was that quick!



A cupcake hat for my friend's little one. She's due Dec 7. I'm mailing it out tomorrow.



Yesterday I scanned a bunch of pictures of my mother, my aunts, and my grandmother as children. They are currently on a PDF file on my SD card and if I can figure out how to convert them to .jpg I'll post them here.

...a knitting machine. I promised my friend last Christmas that I'd knit her and her three kids stocking this year. Well of course I just started them today with NanoWrimo looming in just one week I needed to get started on these. I cast on for this yesterday afternoon, after getting upset cause I couldn't remember how to do it for a good twenty minutes. I finally figured it out (again) I've only knitted this pattern a total of 7 times now. I really wanted to have them done by the end of Nov so she could get them the first week of Dec but I really do not think that's going to happen while I'm trying to pump out 50,000 words in November. It's important to me that I finish Nano, this will be the third year that I'm participating and the two years I've completed it as well, it makes me feel like I'm doing something worthwhile with my time (and degree!) I love having outside imposed deadlines, it makes me more organized. That doesn't make any sense at all but it's true, while I was in college taking 21 credits a semester and raising a baby I felt really organized and on top of things. I really enjoyed it, although looking back on it now I have no idea when I slept, but at the time, it didn't matter.

I got  a whole lot of stuff left to knit and I just need to realize that it's probably not all going done and I'm not going to stress about it. I know I can get the stockings done before xmas, and my MIL's gift, and my son's blanket, other than that I'm not worried about it, at least not right now.

We went to the beach.

My youngest daughter went into respitaory distress and was admited to the hopsital. At the beach.

She got out on Monday just in time for her 2nd birthday which was on the 21st.

We had a nice time after all that drama. I don't like to dwell on just how sick she was, she has not be officially diagnosed with anything yet but I'm thinking it's asthma. I have a strong family history of it, and listening to her breath, the sound of her rattling chest, it all just clicked into place for me. We'll see how long the medical establishment takes to get to that point. We are now the owners of a nebulizer, and she has an appointment for her 2 year check up on the 30th. I will also be getting my flu shot that day, and so will she.

She's going to love me, and then I will take her to McDonalds because that's what we do after shots. For babies that is. I am still on a very restricted diet to my Crohn's.

I've been thinking a lot about Christmas lately. I'm not sure that it helps that it's the 25th and that means it's "Christmas in September" on QVC and they keep saying that it's only 3 months until xmas which is enough to put my into a panic. I have done some shopping a already but I'm not near done, and I don't even want to talk about all the knitting I should probably be doing right now. So much to do. I need to prioritize because I'm never going to get it all done at this rate.

Hubby's xmas hat. Rav link

working on another xmas gift.

I bought yarn to make xmas gifts (all my kids want blankets), renewed my flickr account, and bought a pattern (pdf from fibertrends, which I still don't have, what's up Fiber Trends!)

I hope my wrists can hold up, which is why I'm starting everything now. My friend is also pregnant and due Dec 7. I'd like to make her a blanket at least and I think I found a pattern for it (which I won't be posting because I don't know if she reads this). So yeah, going to be busy which also means that once again my personal knitting is going to be put on the back burner. Sorry East meets West bag! Hopefully I'll get a chance to work on it again after Halloween.

Here's how the crafting is shaping up so far:

baby blanket (knit, not for xmas - gotta start this first!)
squirrel stuffy (knit)
2 afghans (knit)
2 pomp-a-doodle scarfs (knit)
3 xmas stockings for a friend and her two kids (knit)
random crazy quilt (sewn)


still have no idea what to make my mom (maybe a bag or a scarf) and that's the extent of my xmas crafting. I don't like to make things for a lot of people. In many minds handmade = cheap. They'd rather have a 25 dollar gift card to a random store, and that's fine.

The most depressing day of the winter season in my house, putting away Christmas.



It seems like I was just putting this all up and now it's time to put it all away for another year.

Today was not good for a number of reasons, bad medical news, bad job news, but I had a good day at home with my mom and the little girls. We played a new board game, we had several tea parties, and watched lots of Nick Jr. while it snowed outside and big brother was at a school.

I'm left with a deep sense of calm despite all the bad coming at me right now. I love my children and I love being their mom.

Before felting, yes that is a 2 liter bottle of soda on the floor beside it. It. was. huge. I was so worried about it not felting down to where I wanted it.



and after



Success!!

I then went ahead and lined it and added a zipper! A zipper! Can you believe it? I still sort of can't. Sometime I will go ahead and steal it back from her and take photos of the lining and the zipper. Mom only likes purses that have a "flat bottom" and be able to sit on it's own so I went ahead and googled and googled some more until I finally came across this tutorial which I bookmarked and came back to several times throughout my process. The idea of using fun foam to line the bottom was genius and since i had several pieces of that laying around would out super well for me.

I literally finished sewing the lining in on Christmas Eve which is totally not my MO but I was so so scared to do it I just kept putting it off. That was silly and I don't intend on doing that again. Last minute things stress me out.

She had no idea that I had made it at all and was super impressed and that gave me warm fuzzies. <3 This was the only gift I knitted this Christmas (besides the stockings which weren't really gifts per-say).

Time has gotten away from me. I look at the stats and it says I haven't blogged since Dec 8. Dec 8! That seems so long ago. Really, i know it isn't but December always seems like such a long month to me.

It's so quiet here. The kids are visiting their father's family. I'm home sick and though I'm appreciating the quiet so I can rest I miss them and they've only been gone since 10AM!


Christmas went well. The kids enjoyed their gifts (as far as I could tell) and I managed to finish all the stockings they didn't rip after they were filled either which was my husband concern (I wish I knew if he were kidding or not when he said that...) and I managed to finish my mother's felted bag, even line it, the linining included three pocks, and the whole thing closes with a zipper! I'm so impessed with myself.



More later. Maybe. If I'm up to it.

My biggest goal thus far has been to become really good at something, just one thing. So far I'm okay at several things and I don't actually have enough motivation to stick it out to be really good at anything. I've dabbled in pretty much everything my entire life and nothing has stuck. I keep starting blogs and I'll post a couple of times on each of them and then stop cause I just can't keep up the pretense. All the blogs I read are happy, lighthearted, Christian, good mama blogs. I just can't do that. I'd like to think that I'm all of the above things too but I just can't write about it daily and have it seem true. I think I stopped blogging at all my other blogs (besides my personal LJ) simply because I wasn't being true to myself. All this came to me suddenly in such a rush it was almost overwhemling and scared me to the point of almost doing nothing like always. Al my life I've let fear control me and although it scares me far more than I'd like to admit I'm not going to let it any more.

I'm going to make this my main blog and eventually wheen myself off the private LJ, let's see how long this lasts.

I need to get started on my xmas knitting. I've stalled out (like always) half way through. I have two more stockings to knit and a couple of hats. I'd also like to knit a bag for mom but I'm nervous about that because while she says she wants a bag she also has very specific bag needs and I don't think I can make what she wants.

I need some motivation. I'm not sure where to find it.