Runaway October

Okay, so after a 7 month hia­tus, I am back. If you ever want to get com­ments on your blog, just stop blog­ging for a really long time. I hope to be back blog­ging reg­u­larly now. I over­hauled the whole blog, got rid of unnec­es­sary “fea­tures” and setup a new gallery tool. Be sure to check out the pic­tures, by click­ing on the links either above or to the right. I update with pic­tures of the boys reg­u­larly.

New Year by *Sally M*

On another note, 2009 has come to a close. It was a year of ups and downs for us, like I’m sure it was for most other fam­i­lies. We were taken to court by one of my day­care clients, and nice guys always fin­ish last. My hus­band bought me a won­der­ful new home! He also plowed through mas­sive lay­offs at his work and even ended up with a pro­mo­tion. We were sur­prised with an unex­pected preg­nancy and sub­se­quent mis­car­riage. We made new friends, lost fam­ily mem­bers, and all in all I think we weath­ered the storm nicely. We can only hope 2010 is as good… Well, maybe with a lit­tle less of the downs, of course.

As is typ­i­cal for me, I hope that I can use my blog to stick to my New Years res­o­lu­tions, which are pretty typ­i­cal for me, just look at the one’s from years past. But this time I have a whole house to dec­o­rate and make homey. On a bud­get. I also con­vinced Matt to buy this lit­tle pretty for my Christ­mas present…in pink of course.

Cav­allini 2010 Daily Planner

My hope is that I’ll have plenty of space to sched­ule things ahead of time, so that I don’t end up scram­bling the day before a birth­day or 4 weeks before Christ­mas again. My plan is to make Christ­mas presents through­out the year, and maybe setup a cou­ple craft­ing get-togethers. So if any of you are inter­ested in meet­ing to have some good food, a few drinks and make batches of Christ­mas presents with friends, let me know.

I have lots of new recipes to try, crafts to make, sewing to do and I hope to do a bit of can­ning. And by a bit, I mean I think I’ve been bit­ten by a can­ning bug. I found a new source for cheap, fresh pro­duce and home­made jam and jel­lies has never sounded bet­ter. I still need to set up and dec­o­rate my “craft room”. I’m kinda ignor­ing the fact that half of it is sup­posed to be for Matt’s com­puter stuff. We debate over the name of it con­stantly. Matt orig­i­nally named it the S.O.R. — Server Oper­a­tions Room. I’ve decided it’s the Sewing Machine Oper­a­tions Room — S.M.O.R. That’s a  much nicer name, don’t you think?

So those are a few of the things I’ll be work­ing on this year. Wont you join me?

And remem­ber, a blog­ger lives for com­ments. Please don’t be shy. If you drop by, lemme know you were here! To do so, just click on the link below that says “Leave a comment/# of com­ments” and type in what­ever your heart desires.

Thanks for read­ing!

Some­times it’s so nice to just wipe a slate clean and start over again.

Last years res­o­lu­tions were hit or miss.

1…) Stop cussing, com­pletely. Neg­a­tive

2…) Smile more. Kinda sorta, I guess.

3…) Spend more indi­vid­ual time with Declan and treat him like an adult. Yes and no.

4…) Cre­ate and add some items to my Etsy shop. Nope.

5…) Do more craft projects — for myself and with the kids. Yes!

So, once again I’m going to set some res­o­lu­tions and think about them ran­domly throughtout the year and feel bad when I don’t hit them 100%. Yep. Sounds about right.

1.) Stop cussing, com­pletely — How did I end up wih such a potty mouth? While I admit that Declan telling me my ass is too big makes me gig­gle, it’s also quite embarass­ing in public.

2.) Detox­ify the house — This one is dif­fi­cult because my mom buys her own clean­ing prod­ucts and calls me, jok­ingly, a tree­hug­ger for my choices. It’s just so easy to have things build up under the sinks. Thank­fully I clean so infre­quently that it’s not a real issue to toss every­thing. I’m also going to start “No ‘Poo“ing my hair again. I tried before while work­ing but couldn’t han­dle going out in pub­lic dur­ing the really wonky phase. Here’s a great Live­Jour­nal com­mu­nity for it. We have an on again, off again rela­tion­ship with the health­ier beauty prod­ucts, mainly because of finances. I think it might be time to just suck it up and buy what I know is best for the fam­ily — not best for my bank account.

3.) ETSY — Seri­ously, why can’t I get this going? I’ve decided not to do any­more swaps, so maybe that will make it eas­ier? Wih the purc­ahse of a new sewing machine (50% off clear­ance sale) I’m definitly going to com­plete more projects, but I’d like to make a lit­tle extra cash too.

4.) Try to cut back on HFCS and MSG — With that com­bi­na­tion it leaves next to zilch to buy. Thank­fully Matt is on board with me and we’ve both done some research into the issue. Frankly it scares us.

Alright, I think that’s enough bab­bling. And the boys are wait­ing on me to watch a movie.

Thanks for reading!

“Phew!” with a dra­matic swipe across his forehead.

I’ve actu­ally been pretty busy of late. Remem­ber those 17 loads of laun­dry stuffed on the couch that I men­tioned? ALL folded, hung, sorted, orga­nized and put away!! After 3 weeks it was hard to come up with excuses for why it was still there. But I’ve also com­pleted 2 more aprons — one for Grandma Betty’s birth­day, along with match­ing place­mats and one for Nicky’s birth­day. I finally got a new iron­ing board cover made. It’s super sim­ple but took a day because of the nooblets… I mean the kidlets. (Does any­one remem­ber Sixlets? Those were awe­some!) I started a third apron for Ann today. Next up is my bag for the Mar­ket Tote Swap. I have the idea all worked out in my head, I just hope I can trans­fer it to real­ity easily.

So after all that’s done I’m going to start work­ing on some smock­ing and shirring and post­ing items to my Etsy shop. I promise. No more swaps or birth­days and what­not. I’ve found some gor­geous designer prints mixed in with the cheapy cot­tons at JoAnns and have totally scored bolts of them with 50% off coupons. I’m afraid to cut some of them up.

I’ve also been comtem­plat­ing get­ting a cot­tage license to sell the aprons that I’ve been mak­ing. The thing is it’s $100 for a year but I’m not sure if I could cover the cost with any profit I make, ya know? The license gives me the right to make and sell any­thing by Sew Lib­er­ated, for­mally Montes­sori by Hand, where as now I can only make and give such as all that I’ve made so far. It takes me about a week of fid­dling to make an apron because of… interup­tions. The hard­est part is choos­ing the fab­rics — I always worry that some­one will get their apron and go “WTH was she think­ing? This isn’t me at all!” I’m debat­ing on just going it alone, or using some­one else’s pat­terns. Any thoughts?

[singlepic=105,250]

Here’s Grandma’s Apron. The reverse is a very pretty white Poppy print.

Well, hon­estly not the greatest.

• Did I cuss? Yes. Did I give up? NO!
• Did I smile more? Dunno, no one else but the boys were home with me.
• Did I spend more time with Declan? We did some laun­dry together, but noth­ing special.
• Did I do any crafts? Nope. I did try a new eggsalad recipe though, with a few touches of my own every­one really liked it. I also signed up for the Daring Baker chal­lenges. Seems I missed out on Jan­u­ary, but hope­fully I’ll get in on February’s chal­lenge. Yay! I am really excited about that.

I also had my final 10 week visit with my won­der­ful and adorable Mid­wife. Every­thing is good, Rowan has dou­bled his birth weight and then some, etc etc.

All in all it was un unevent­ful day. Tomor­row a have a lit­tle guy com­ing to play for awhile so that he’s used to us when he starts day­care with me on Tues­day. Excit­ing!

Well, here we go!

I’ve grad­u­ated from the world of MySpace blogs and here I am. Decid­edly unhappy that I can’t have a cus­tom theme until I set up my own domain but oh well, no need to get picky over lit­tle details.

My main rea­son for start­ing a free­stand­ing blog was to help me stick to one of my New Year’s res­o­lu­tions — to do more dar­ing cook­ing adven­tures and com­plete more crafts. I’d even like to get some stuff com­pleted and sold through my Etsy shop. I’m con­tem­plat­ing chang­ing my shop name though. Such tough deci­sions.
Today break­fast was Sausage/Egg/Cheese/Potato/Onion break­fast bur­ri­tos. Noth­ing new or fancy but tried, true and deli­cious none the less. Lunch was home­made mac­a­roni from a recipe off the Car­na­tion Evap­o­rated milk can. It was alright. I was hop­ing it would be like the Out­back Mac&Cheese, but alas, no such luck. Some­day I’ll get it.