She Knits Shizknits

wordless wednesday

random ramblings wednesday

-This is the best, most REAL post about marriage + babies, evah!

-it's supposed to be 'cool' today..that means 75F instead of 85F. Seriously? 85F in November?

-I went shopping at Old Navy yesterday and picked up a sweater dress. I'm not sure it's a keeper- I'm kinda scared to wear it, but it looked cute in the store so we'll see.  Of course I don't know why I was trying on sweater dresses when it was 85F- I was sweating like a pig in the fitting room!

-it looks like LIttle Man cracked one of his baby molars. augh.  And of course our dentist is out sick...the crack happened yesterday but the tooth is still holding on and it doesn't seem to be bothering him too much right now. I'm waiting for the dentist's office to call me back...

-for goodness' sake, end the drama

-I want to wear my new boots- these are seriously the most.comfortable.boots.ever.  And can I tell you, I bought knee socks? To wear with my boots? And it's totally cute? 

-I haven't worn knee socks since Catholic school

-TMobile has been acting all wonky...I can make calls, but not receive them. Then I can receive calls, but not make them. This morning it seemed to be working fine...but we'll see!

-I have an oatmeal breakfast muffin that I want to make today...

-Little Man is the sweetest little boy....this morning I was dropping him off in the car-dropoff line and he leaned inside as the van door was closing and yelled: "You're the best Mama ever!"  *unclench heart*

-I need to clean my kitchen

-Laundry is the devil

-I dropped off LM early today so I could make the 745am yoga class; so glad I went!

-wanna try some soap making....why not?

-I have a crafty home project to work on today....so maybe it'll be muffins, then dropoff, then crafty project???? Or more likely I'll just fart around on the computer till it's dropoff time, then fart around at home and waste the whole day.

-Why do I feel like I spend all day picking up around the house, but it's never clean?

-need more coffee

-That's all!

All Fall, all the time

Wow, we've been so busy I haven't had a chance to post for a week!  So this will be an epic post, with plenty of photos....

I was worried we wouldn't be able to get to the pumpkin patch this year. Usually, we go to Tanaka Farms, take the tractor ride, and pick our pumpkins from the fields.  Unfortunately, the Dearest has been so incredibly busy that he couldn't find the time in his schedule to join us at the farm. So when friends suggested meeting after preschool at a local pumpkin patch, I decided to take the small men and go. We've been to Pumpkin City several times in the past...

It's not one of my favorite patches since it's set up in the parking lot of the local mall...but the boys love it because there are lots of rides!  The first ride Monkey Boy went on was the tractor 'race':



The kids went round and round in the circle on these little tractors...MB seemed to have an advantage since we have a battery powered jeep at home- he knew how to steer and step on the gas much better than some of the other kids.

Little Man pestered me to allow him to try the 'fishing game'. The kids had to use fishing poles with magnets on the end to pick up one of the prize bobbers from a circulating stream of water.

Here they are with their prizes:

Next up was the boat ride:

Then the boys saw the big round swing ride and wanted to take it for a spin (awful pun, I know!)


I was off to the side, watching and taking photos...and after a while I wondered when the carny was going to stop the ride. Two minutes turned into five minutes while he chatted with a busty female customer...and then some of the kids on the ride started looking a little green. Finally one boy began screaming that he wanted OFF! or he was going to be sick! LOL

After that, the small men were willing to oblige me with some silly 'still' shots:





And then we had one final ride around the patch with some friends:

There are a few more photos here if you'd like to see them. One thing that is strange about this particular pumpkin patch is every time we've visited, it's been SO HOT! Notice how all the kids are wearing shorts and tshirts? It was probably 90F that afternoon. Crazy!

One of the things keeping me from posting recently was the costume-making for myself and Monkey Boy. Last Thursday, Little Man and I went to the fabric/craft store to buy some last minute supplies. While we were there, LM spent a long time in the kids' craft aisle, looking at all the fun kits. I told him he could buy whatever he wanted as long as he spent his own money. He also had a 40% off coupon that I had given him to use. He finally picked out a dinosaur excavating kit, and as soon as we got home he put on the included safety glasses to excavate his dino:

I think this safety glasses were the cutest part of this kit:

The safety glasses were also worn during our pumpkin carving escapade. Both the small men had picked out LARGE pumpkins that I could hardly lift, much less cut into. It took me about 20 minutes and much cursing under my breath to cut the tops off of each pumpkin. Luckily the boys were pretty good about cleaning out their own pumpkin guts. Then it was time to trace our templates onto the pumpkins:

We taped the stencils we printed out onto the pumpkins and then used pushpins to poke along the outlines of the shapes.

We have a battery operated pumpkin cutter, but the blade was too short to go all the way through to the inside of the gigantic pumpkins....so I would cut out shape, pop out as much as I could, and give a safety 'knife' to LM or MB to finish cutting.

Here are the finished pumpkins (LM's ghost on the left, MB's bats on the right):


Thank goodness the Dearest showed up while I was still carving, because LM still wanted to put a 'Scooby face' on his pumpkin. I kept trying to tell LM that I didn't think it would be doable because the Scooby stencil he'd chosen was pretty detailed, and his pumpkin was so thick.
The Dearest saved the day by using one of the smaller pumpkins, and look at how happy LM is:

The Scooby face turned out great, too! The Dearest really does these detailed carvings well:

You can also see the little punkin I carved in this photo...that's the Sanskrit word, "OM"....or my approximation of it anyways!

This past week also involved a lot of planning for our neighborhood block party. Our friends P and D were hosting, so we spent Friday night decorating their garage with sheets, streamers, bats, and spiderwebs. The party was "Come as you're NOT"...and look at these great costumes!

Monkey Boy as the "Riddler" (aka "the mystery man", becuz according to MB, that's not a question mark on his shirt, it's a "mystery mark"):

here's a little better view of his shirt:
I had to make his outfit because we couldn't find a green unitard in his size anywhere! So I bought some white thermals and dyed them green with RIT dye, then stitched a big felt question mark on the front. It turned out cute, except the thermal bottoms were waaay huge in the waist so we had to use safety pins to hold his pants on!

Little Man was a Ghostbuster:

He even made a ID badge for himself, and wore a flashlight all night.
I was "Stinkerbell"- Tinkerbell's evil twin (who is wayyyy more fun, too), and the Dearest went as "Edward Cullen" from the book/movie "Twilight":


The kids had a ball trick or treating, and everyone had lots of good food and drink...there was so much yummy stuff at the potluck, I kept going back for more! One of the funniest things all night was the doughnut game. We tied a doughnut onto a string and made the kids try to eat the doughnuts without using their hands:

It was SO funny watching the kids run around in circles, trying to bite their doughnuts. I think it might have been even funnier if we'd tried it with the adults (many of whom were a few cups into the beverages!). There are a lot more party pics here if you're interested.

This next week should be a little quieter...I"m looking forward to trying out this new set of paints I picked up:

I haven't painted with acrylics in YEARS....It should be fun to give it whirl again!

"look up"

When it rained last week, Monkey Boy kept asking if he could go outside and 'catch rain drops'...when I said yes, he immediately ran out wearing just his choneys, PJ top, and rainboots. It was so cute I had to take a photo with my phone (no way I'm getting my camera wet!).  Then of course I had to digiscrap it:

(all papers and elements from IAlexeeva's "make believe" digikit)

that toothfairy better get a second job...

Little Man lost *another* tooth today...we were in the parking lot, waiting to pick up Monkey Boy, when LM said, "Hey, my tooth fell out!"...and sure enough, there was another gap in his smile!

digiscrapping: Beach Bum

If you read my blog thru Bloglines or Googlereader, come check out my new banner....I just realized it's only been a year since I updated it so I finally got around to making a new one... And since I had Photoshop open, I did some digiscrapping, too:

All papers and elements from MKDesigns' "Deep Water" digikit. Photos are from July, 2006 (!).

new hair

I got my hair cut and colored yesterday...I love how it looks right after the stylist gets done:


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Too bad it doesn't look that good every day! I don't have the inclination to spend 20 minutes every day blowdrying my hair. And even if I did, I know I don't have the skill to make it look that good!

candy corn maths

morning routine

wordless wednesday