Baby's Room

FINALLY, I'm posting pix of the baby's room. I've had them on the camera for eons but am just now getting around to downloading the pix. Blame the delay on having three kids and too many projects...

We were going for a "vintage sports theme". It is a handsome little guy's room, IMO (in my opinion)....AND making it even more stellar, again IMO, is that this is predominately a "re-mix" room...one that I am MOST proud of!

An old camel-colored micro-suede couch slip cover, with a huge ink stain, was the jumping off point for the remix and the "base" fabric for the baby bedding. The curtains we had gotten from freecycle a few years ago and were using them in our room. The sheers were being used in my old office. The bed was a hand-me-down from a friend of mine, Heidii, who also was responsible for making the super cool pennants that spell out the baby's name. The dresser, wicker shelves and rocking chair were things I already had, although a coat of red paint made the chair so pretty. The same red paint spruced up an old lamp, some frames and a couple shelves. My super talented and wonderful Mom made ALL the baby bedding and the uber-comfy chair cushions. She also dyed some sheets and changing pad covers I had to brown to match everything!

Everything came together to make a really cool room that I absolutely LOVE! AND, this baby bedding set will see yet another life when Reese moves into room with his older brother Ryan. I'm going to re-mix the bedding to make valances for the curtains and pillows for the beds and continue the sports theme to the boys room. I already have an idea on a baseball bat bookshelf...

Here Comes Santa Clause

Guess who came to town? That's right. SANTA!
He visited the Cedar Park Library during the kids' weekly story time. There was a TON more kids there to see Santa than we usually have for story time but that was understandable. The kids all sang several holiday songs before Santa made his big appearance.

Although both the older kids were very excited about seeing Santa, by the time our turn arrived, Ryan wasn't much into sitting on Santa's lap, or even talking to him for that matter. I did, however, get a pix of all my babies with Santa Clause though.

Funny thing...a few days earlier as I was driving to the store, I passed a vehicle that a "real" Santa was driving. It made me take a second glance to be sure it was who I thought it was and sure enough...SANTA was driving past me. Now, I could have been all grown-up and played it cool and drove on as though nothing was out of the normal, but that wouldn't be like me. So what did yours truly do? With a big goofy grin on my face, I waved like crazy at Santa. He probably thought I was a loon. LOL.... It made my day though, to see Santa!

A PURR-fect 5th Birthday

This past Saturday we celebrated my darling daughter's fifth birthday. I still can't believe that it was five years ago that the hospital sent us home with this little bitty thing and expected us to be able to raise it. Our first child, we were, looking back now, so clueless as to what we were doing. It's amazing she turned out as well as she did. LOL... Just kidding.

Anyway, Hello Kitty was the "theme" my DD selected for her fifth birthday party which was attended by both family and friends. We had a Hello Kitty cake with ice cream and punch. Hadley received gobs of wonderful presents and had a wonderful time. I just can't believe she's five years old.



(Pix descriptions....The birthday girl was very surprised, and very happy, to see a new bicycle for her birthday.
Digging all the way down to the bottom of every bag.
"You wear these like this." Showing us where the barrettes go.)

Cow Tongue....Mmmmm

While I've eaten just about anything you can kill, I'd never had cow tongue. Hubby wanted some though, so cow tongue I made. Cleaning it fell somewhere on the gross-o-meter between pulling chicken innards out before you cook a chicken and cleaning the slime off of deer meat. It was SO nasty.

Anyway, we cooked it up. First I boiled it for a while. Then, after removing the outer taste bud layer, I roasted it for a bit before shredding it up and sauteing it with onion and tomato. Toss it on a warm corn tortilla with a squeeze of lime and YUM-MY!!! It was like a very tender and mild tasting pot roast.

Granted, while it was good, it was more work than I, personally, think it was worth so it won't be something I just whip up on any given night, but it was good and now I can say that I've eaten cow tongue. Just don't tell me that's what I'm eating while I'm eating it. ;O)

My Baby Girl is FIVE

Happy 5th birthday to my oldest, my darling, sweet, baby girl. She is growing up WAY too fast. I can't believe it has already been five years since she first came into our lives. We're having her bday party this Saturday.

Sweater for Reese & Other Knitting

With only a little bit left to knit, my unofficial ADD got the better part of me and this little sweater, which I began knitting right after having had Reese, went into a mini-hibernation. FINALLY, today, I finished it. I'm very tickled with the end result and can't wait for my littlest guy to wear it.

Also knit up a little scarf collar for DD. She'd picked some yarn from my stash and wanted a
scarf knit from it. Unfortunately, I only had 27 yds of the bulky so it ended up being a "collar". Hadley picked out the groovy button used to close it. Knit up in just a jiffy.

Although I STILL have the Tuscany shawl that needs to be finished (and I should be working on it so I can have it done to wrap up in on cold days like today), I cast on for the Celtic Tote this afternoon. I've wanted this tote since it made its appearance in Interweave Knits Winter 2007 issue. Thanks to a coupon for % off purchase, I got some yarn to get knitting on it! It has a more intricate and challenging cable pattern than I've ever knit before so it should prove interesting, however, having just completed a simple cable project with the Sleeveless Cabled Baby Sweater, I'm feeling confident that I can work through it. The body of tote is going to be a Natural Brown Fisherman's Wool and the trim will likely be black. Not decided about that part yet.

I'm SO excited I finally finished Reese's little sweater though. Also, for Thanksgiving, he wore for the first time, the little maize colored cardigan I'd knit up while pregnant. He was so handsome in it!

Difficult to Choose

The Saturday after Thanksgiving the family headed off to get our FIRST family photo taken by Stephanie Huebinger of Huebinger Studios. She does EXCELLENT work and was able to make all of us look great...so much so, in fact, that it is going to be difficult to choose which pix to order. I'm very excited about the fact we got an "official" family picture though. Costly as it is turning out to be, they are going to be so wonderful!