I had a great month for completing the goals on my big list! I knocked 6 items off my list and made progress on 3 more. Woooo! Here’s what I accomplished:
Completed:
#19 Make a softie for my niece-to-be. I used this pattern from Betz White to make this cutie little hedgehog out of some of the many sweaters I’ve felted in the past couple of months. While I was putting him together, I started calling him by the name Hedgie von Hedgenstein. My favorite part is this little heart on his tummy:
#21 Make at least 30 scrapbook layouts. — I participated in the Layout a Day Challenge that Lain Ehmann put on and I made 28 scrapbook layouts in 28 days! Phwew! That was hard. I already posted about my first 12 a few weeks ago. Here are the final 16 I made. (You can view a larger version of any of these by clicking the appropriate link below the mosaic.)
#34 Sign up for a Mommy and Me type class with Augie. — I tried out a free Gymboree class with August this month to see if it was something he would like to do. He was completely terrified by it and it was crazy expensive so we decided not to go that route. I looked around a little more and found a baby gym class at the local Y. It was crowded and chaotic, but Augie seemed to really enjoy himself, so we are going to start attending semi-regularly. And at $5 per session vs. $17 per session at Gymboree, it fits a lot better in our budget.
#36 Take August to ride the steam trains. — I took both boys up to Tilden and we rode the steam trains. Yay!
#42 Buy a laundry hamper. — We haven’t had a laundry hamper since we moved into this house. I bought two so we can sort the laundry on the fly. If I had my preference, they would have had lids, but I couldn’t find anything I liked with lids, so I’m making do with these. In any case, it looks way nicer than a big mountain of clothes on the floor of our bedroom.
Before:
After:
#52 Buy an every day skirt. — I bought this skirt at Old Navy. It’s totally boring, but that’s sort of the point.
In Progress:
#3 Find five reliable, healthy, delicious soup recipes. — I’ve got one more soup recipe under my belt: Easy Sausage Tortellini Soup. I followed the recipe pretty closely, but instead of cabbage, I added in baby spinach at the end. This soup took about a half an hour to throw together and it was beyond delicious. For a recipe with so few ingredients, it had an incredible depth of flavor.
#54 Find a babysitter. — I’m visiting some day cares this week to see if they’ll be a good match for Augie. Wish me luck!
Upcoming:
#4 Learn to make pickles and/or marmalade. — My brother-in-law gifted me with a huge bag of oranges so I can try making marmalade. I consulted with my friend Shae who is a marmalade queen and she suggested that I pick up a copy of the Ball Book of Home Preserving which I have now acquired. I’m going to need to look the book over and get some equipment still, but I’m hoping to knock out some marmalade in the next couple of weeks.
#7 Make macarons. — I also got my copy of I Love Macarons in the mail this week, so I’m hoping to try a batch of those in March too.
February 19, 2010: Augie loves, loves, loves jumping right now and he especially loves holding onto the edge of his crib and going up and down. Sometimes Wyatt likes to join in by jumping with him.
February 20, 2010: This is my new niece, Evelyn. Isn’t she a little snuggle bunny? She was born on the 15th, but we had to wait 5 whole days to meet her because we all had terrible colds and I really didn’t want to pass on our germs to such a tiny little baby. When we were finally well enough, we went to Erin and Bryan’s to see her. We are so happy she has joined our family.
February 21, 2010: Though it looks like Augie is reading to Wyatt here, Wyatt is actually telling Augie the story of Officer Buckle & Gloria. Like all of Peggy Rathman’s books this is one of our favorites. We often quote the safety rules in it to the boys, our favorite being “Safety Rule #1: Never stand on a chair with wheels!”
February 22, 2010: Wyatt and I played a quick game of Trouble while Augie finished his breakfast. He beat me.
February 23, 2010: The boys goof around in their room before bed time
February 24, 2010: Augie likes to lay on our bed while I fold laundry.
February 25, 2010: Playing on the school playground after Kindergarten pick-up with some of the kids from Wyatt’s class. There is some kind of fad with using these swinging rings all of a sudden. I’ve been taking the boys to play on the playground after school for months now and I think I’ve only seen kids use these rings once or twice. Then, this week there are suddenly kids swinging back and forth constantly. Huh.
Phwew! After a week off school, I was completely out of the habit of making lunches and snacks for school! I totally forgot to put something together until 5 minutes before we had to head out the door so I threw together this quick snack of ham cubes and one of Wyatt’s beloved buns. I added a lion pick to snazz it up a bit and to give him something to use to eat the ham besides his fingers. The lion pick was chosen to match the lion on the lid of the bento box:
I’m all about the coordination, folks!
Tuesday:
Tuesday was Laptop Lunchbox day. I put in a couple of Chessman cookies, pretzel sticks, dried cranberries, peaches and pears with sprinkles, a whole wheat bun, ham cubes and apple slices. As usual, he didn’t eat the apple slices but I like to put them in now and then just in case he decides to try them.
Wednesday:
Lunch on Wednesday was sweet Italian chicken sausage rounds, a lone cherry tomato, banana bread and pineapple and blueberries arranged to look like a bumble bee (though I didn’t really realize that until I was reviewing the pictures).
The Italian sausage is a new food we’re trying. As you’ve probably gathered by now, Wyatt is a sausage lover, but he’s always declared Italian sausage to be “too spicy”. I bought these sausages for a lasagna I made on Tuesday night and he was eating the chunks almost as fast as I could put them into the pan so I decided to try them out for his lunch on Wednesday.
I packed an applesauce crusher, pretzel thins and dried cranberries for his snacks.
Thursday:
Thursday’s lunch had wedges of whole wheat flat bread that I toasted and spread with a smidge of butter and garlic salt, blueberries, pretzel thins, banana bread, pineapple chunks, grape tomatoes and a block of baked tofu with his name in it.
Friday:
Today’s snack was some blueberries and a hand full of pretzel thins.
February 12, 2010: I made a batch of hard-boiled eggs for breakfasts and lunches and put them in a carton in the fridge. Zach and I got our wires crossed when I told him where they were and this is what ended up happening when he gave one a good whack on the counter to peel it.
February 13, 2010: Oh. My. God. This is one of those humiliating motherhood moments like no other. I was checking Wyatt’s homework over before I sent it off to school and I noticed this drawing at the bottom of the page where he was practicing writing his P’s. It’s a picture of a guy shooting a gun at someone and saying, “HA HA HA HA”. I didn’t even know Wyatt knew how to spell “ha ha”. He says it was a good guy shooting a “bad guy”, but I was still appalled.
February 14, 2010: Tubby time!
February 15, 2010: Wyatt was off school for winter break this week so I tried to get us out of the house every day to do something fun. This day we went up to Tilden park to ride the steam trains. It was the first time we’d gone with Augie since he’s been aware of his surroundings and I was curious to see how he liked it. When we took Wyatt at about the same age, he was so scared that we dubbed them the “terror trains”, but it ended up that Augie thought the ride was pretty fun. (Wyatt loved the trains the next time we rode them, by the way…)
February 16, 2010: Zach let Wyatt play with his phone as a reward for being well-behaved at dinner. He likes to play Doodle Jump and he’s pretty good at it. Note the little red socks on the floor under Augie’s high chair. He takes his socks off practically every time he eats a meal.
February 17, 2010: Yay! Yay! YAY!!! My new camera came! This is one of the photos I took the first day. I used the highly sophisticated stick-out-your-arm-and-click method of photography.
February 18, 2010: For another fun vacation activity I took the kids to the Bay Area Discovery Museum. Here August works on building the Golden Gate Bridge.
Wyatt’s was off school last week, so I haven’t been making him lunches. (Well, actually, I have been making him lunches — I just haven’t been packing them into bento boxes.) To keep the bento love flowing, I thought I would share some of my favorite places to visit for bento inspiration.
Lunch in a Box — This is the blog that started me on my bento hobby. Biggie doesn’t make super-arty bentos, but she does make attractive bentos quickly which made me think, “Hey, I could do that!”
Mr. Bento Flickr Group — My first bento box was the Mr. Bento set that my husband bought me for Christmas. I used to fill it dutifully every day to take to work with me and I would photograph my lunches and post them to this group. Since I got laid off, poor Mr. Bento has been collecting dust, but if I’m ever gainfully employed at a job that requires me to work on site again, I’ll be pulling him out and putting him to work again.
Sakurako Kitsa’s Flickr Stream — Sakurako Kitsa makes my absolute favorite art bentos. They’re whimsical and adorable and I pour over her photos trying to figure out what she used to make the various elements of each lunch.
Happy Little Bento — Sherimiya always has something fun and delicious-looking to share.
The time has come to say good-bye to my beloved camera. My Canon Digital Rebel 300D has officially bit the dust. It started flashing an error message two weeks ago, and after a consultation with a repair shop I was informed that the shutter was broken and it would cost nearly $200 to repair. Ouch! Since this would be the second repair in less than a year, I had some hard thinking to do. I chatted up some of my photographer-type friends and the consensus seemed to be that the life span of a camera like mine wasn’t much longer than the five years I’ve had it. Sure, I could fix the camera this time, but there are likely other parts that are on the verge of wearing out. I started seeing lots of expensive repairs in my future.
Still, I hate the idea that a camera like this is simply at the end of it’s life. I’m really, really annoyed that something this expensive isn’t built to last or even really built to be repaired. It drives me nuts that so many products are cheaper to replace than to maintain!
I stewed over this decision for over a week and then finally, my husband decided that he was going to get me a new camera. My new camera arrived today and I’m so excited about it. It’s faster, smaller, it has a bigger screen and lots more bells and whistles. I know it’s going to be a really great friend to me.
But I’m still feeling a little sentimental about my old camera. It had a really good run. I’m not sure of the exact date we got it, but I know that it was in early April of 2005, so we’ve had it approximately 4 years, 10 months or 1767 days. In that time I took…
Wait for it…
Seriously, it’s worth it.
47577 photos!
That’s an average of 27 photos per day for the last five years! Wow!
This old camera has captured births and birthdays, Christmases, Halloweens, babies, big kids, cuddles, naps, friends, family, beach trips, snow trips, trips to the playground, countless photos of a kid in a Batman suit, countless pictures of toddlers eating in their high chairs, bentos — dear God, there have been a lot of bento pictures! There have been photos of dishes, laundry, craft projects, and other things that are so mundane I can’t even remember them. Lamps! I’ve taken photos of lamps! Seriously — who takes pictures of lamps?
A woman who loves her camera, that’s who.
Good-bye, old friend. Thanks for all the memories!
which I have now acquired. I’m going to need to look the book over and get some equipment still, but I’m hoping to knock out some marmalade in the next couple of weeks.
in the mail this week, so I’m hoping to try a batch of those in March too.
Comments
2010 goals · misc.
. Like all of Peggy Rathman’s books this is one of our favorites. We often quote the safety rules in it to the boys, our favorite being “Safety Rule #1: Never stand on a chair with wheels!”
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