Oh Fried Dough!!

I thought I would come back today, it seems like a good day to return to blogging... and since you're here...won't you join me for a fastnacht?  I just got done making them and have no one around in the house at the moment to share them with... so I'm sharing them with you... and saying "hello" again.

How was your Winter?  I've been gone a long while.  At first I was gone because Christmas was wearing me down... I'm still dealing with my feelings regarding this Christmas.  It wasn't the best... But, I got over Christmas, and moved on.
My next reason for not returning to the blog had to do with my work and family schedules getting all jumbled up and re-arranged once again, and it took me a good bit of time to get my day to day life settled back into a groove.... I realize now that it takes me a long while to sink into a schedule, and get "humming" along again.  I'm happy in a nicely worked out schedule where there is time for everything and everything has a time... This has been challenging to create lately...

So in light of that, I started thinking, well - this is dumb.  Why am I wasting time writing in a blog, when I should be doing stuff I want to do in the dwindling time I'm finding lately to actually do the things I love to do, and not writing about doing things.  It seemed there was only time for either doing or writing... but not time for doing and writing.... so I prioritized.

Except then I realized that writing is important to me and it makes me happy, and it helps me to feel grateful for all the good stuff going on around me, and furthermore, that in not writing, I was losing sight of the good stuff and focusing more on the bad stuff  (that's an old habit of mine that I thought I had broken)

So I decided, yes, I'm coming back to write again.  I'm going to make time.


...   but THEN I was gone because I got sick.  We all four of us got sick... (you may remember that we seem to do this as a family on a yearly basis right around this time...  Bleh.)


but I'm back now.

Feeling a bit better now.

Feeling like writing again.

Feeling like I've eaten too many doughnuts...

I don't have a real plan for posting yet, no real schedule worked out... can't say How or When I will sit down and write, but I can figure that out tomorrow...
And maybe tomorrow I'll give up eating doughnuts too, and observe this "Fat Tuesday" the way it was actually intended...  instead of simply another reason to eat fried dough.

Growing up, my great-grandmother Margaret had our entire extended family (a large extended family) over to her beautiful home on the hill for Fastnachts and molasses every year.  We didn't do this to observe a religiously significant holiday, for us it's clearly more about getting together as a family.  We ate ourselves silly, and talked, and ran around in the basement (the youngest set of us), and were sent home with a bag filled with leftovers and hearts filled with togetherness.  I am missing that tradition today, though it is still going strong among my family in Pennsylvania, thanks to my uncle...

but even though I'm far from my family, I'm carrying it on in my own small way, and thinking of them.  And definitely about my great-grandma.

When I grow up, I want to be like her...



p.s. here's one last tradition I'm continuing from great-grandma Margaret...

Raise your hand if you know what game Johann and I are playing...

p.s.  Here's a link to the doughnut recipe we use if you'd like to make some of your own.

A little project

Last week I finished a small project that's been waiting on my "someday" list for um... 2 years.  ?   Can that be right?

I wish I had taken a before picture so you could appreciate the transformation.
You'll have to imagine a pretty beat up wooden dresser that had been very well used for many years.

I bought two of them, one for each of my boys, so I could take a before picture of the other one  - but it's so buried in the garage I can't even get to it for a picture ...  That's sad.   I hope it doesn't take me another 2 years to finish the second one... but it might.

Anyway - Here's what it looks like finished and in place in George's room.  I spent some time cleaning that room out again this weekend.  Oh how I LOVE to take 2 or 3 big bins of clutter to Goodwill!

 
It's nice to have somewhere to put the clothing now.  My old system (piles in the closet ) was not working.
The dressers I bought from a friend for $20.00 each, and the red paint was from the reject pile at the hardware store.  Somebody didn't like it I guess, but I think it's the perfect red.  $2.00.  So the whole dresser
cost me $22.00 and 2 hours of a little sanding/regluing/and painting.  And I lined the drawers with contact paper.  So that's another $1.00 or something.  Not bad, I think.

Now - here's the next "before" picture for you.

 A new project found at the local park.  I don't know who left it there, but I do know who found it.  Me.
And it's going to be awesome.

Someday :)

This Moment: Happy Blog Anniversary!

Hello!

Today happens to be, much to my surprise, my 1 year blog anniversary!   I can't believe I've been here for a year, it sure went by quickly!  So I'm cheating (and I can because it's my anniversary!) and including a series of shots (since they are all related) for 

This Moment:

Entitled: "Let's take a nice picture of the Lego House we just spent hours working on together!"

Linking up with Soulemama.

Counting Days

Hi.

I wanted to make a priority of posting at least something here on my blog this week.  I have not
forgotten about the blog - I feel best when I'm here regularly, writing, and posting what's going on in our family.
But it's not always possible.

I very often lately am finding myself thinking 'oh - I can't wait to share this on the blog' - and then a week goes
by and it never happens.

And that's OK.

One of the ways i'm attempting to deal with the stress of Christmas, is to let go of expectations.

For instance, My Grand Advent Calendar Plan was to knit 24 little mittens, and then fill them with goodies before the 1st.
By the 28th of November I had 6 mittens done.  And realizing that my time to work on knitting mittens was exactly 45 minutes to an hour after I get home from working the evening shift and before nodding off at night - that meant that I needed to produce at least 9 mittens each of the remaining nights, and at the speed of  roughly 7 minutes per mitten (and I'm rounding up with my time here).
I am a fast knitter, i think, but I am not a robot or a machine.

I had a long talk with myself and we determined my mitten making dreams were actually tipping all the way over from ambitious to fully delusional.

So I headed straight to our winter mitten/scarf/hat bin, and then when that still wasn't making my magic number of "24" I got out the paper and staples and made some mittens the quick and easy way.  Walah!

Our Finished Advent Calendar.
Whew!
I got to bed around 11:00 - 11:45.  Maybe 12:15 at the latest.

I didn't have the smoothest of mornings, consequently, but the calendar is finished and that's what's important.
I think.

And in other news, a handful of other little happy things this morning, because I haven't done this in a while:

1.  The first egg.  I think it's a "Deb".  But it might be a "Celia"... It's definitely NOT a "Lill" who turned out to be a rooster.

2.  Clementines.  Oh boy - do I love them.

3.  Egg Nog.  Yep - I love that too.

4.  New books at the library.

5.  Thursdays.  (My last night of work for the week)

6.  And these new little guys.  It's a new series George is working on.  They are everywhere.
He actually calls them his "little guys"

7.  A small attempt at greater organizational living:  a new mail/library book/key station right inside the front door.

8.  Lastly - my new shoes - a nice new pair of black leather mary janes.  :)

How about you?  Any crazy holiday projects you've finished, abandoned, or modified in order to save
your sanity?
What happy little things are you finding this week?

Mittens and Paper cuts

Good morning!

This week I'm working on making dozens and dozens of tiny mittens - a mitten garland slash Advent calendar.  Find the free pattern here if you want, but it's really just a basic mitten, made over and over
and over again, and it's using up all of my random scrap balls and left-over bits that I never know what
to do with.  The fun part will be putting little gifts and notes inside each one... I'm looking forward to that
part.  Not that I'm not enjoying knitting dozens and dozens of tiny mittens, but I am thinking ahead about
what I'll put inside them.  Little notes that say - Hot Chocolate time!  Let's go for a ride and look at the lights!  Time to bake cookies!   Let's make a paper chain today!  Christmas Movies and popcorn tonight!

yep - I'm looking forward to all of that.

Not to skip ahead of Thanksgiving - which I am also very much looking forward to!   But to be a knitter

you really must plan ahead much farther than other people.  Because it takes longer.  More prep time.

Other knitting update - the handwarmers are done, and are employed at my desk in the office where they
are doing much good keeping my hands toasty and allowing me to type at the same time. 

Lastly, the only thing I'm reading this week is this book I got from our library on Scherenschnitte...  which I hope to tell you more about tomorrow.  I've been working on some things - some papery things.

Linking up with Ginny at Small Things.

and speaking of small things - Here are Johann's first bits of hand knitting.   We are both extremely

proud of these, let me tell you. He took the picture too, and wanted very much to be a part of today's blog post to show you all what he's been working on too this week.

Love my new little knitter :)

Happy W(inds)day.


 

Yarn Along: Hand Warmers

A nice week for knitting and reading.

The darkness of the power outage, and the dark nights that left me a little bit bored (in a good way!) and thumbing through random books on my shelf, led me to pull Tennyson and sit in the dark reading the long poem Enoch Arden for the first time.  A romantic tale of a shipwrecked sailor, who cannot return to his lovely wife and babies - and a triangle, and of dying heartbroken.  Sniff.  It was a good one.  I never pull these types of books from my shelf unless I'm bored and don't know what to do with myself, or what I feel like reading.  That's a shame.  I am always pleasantly surprised, and then I wonder - why on earth don't I read Tennyson more often?

This week I reshelved Tennyson, and pulled down Leaves of Grass instead.  I read a letter that Tennyson wrote to Whitman, so then I thought - yes, I haven't read him either lately.

So now I am - even though the lights are back on, and I've got plenty of knitting and other projects going that keep me busy in the evening.  

Sometimes, you need to stop and just read some good poetry.

In knitting news, I finally cast on for the handwarmers I set my mind on, and they are moving right along.  How lovely to not have to bother with the tedium of finger-knitting in a mitten and just stop at the palm!  I can't wait to wear them to work!

And what's on your night stand?  I'm still looking for my next good novel - something nice and thick. 

Haven't found anything yet.

Linking with Ginny at Small Things.

*** The yarn I'm using for my handwarmers is Lucia yarn by Stephanie at DirtyWaterDyeworks.  I am completely in love with the colors in the yarn, and the way they are working up in the finished mitten.  You can find her and her beautiful yarn here: http://www.dirtywaterdyeworks.com/lucia.html

 

the trees, trees, trees came down, down, down!

Well, we lost a bunch (!) of oak trees in the late October snow storm that came on Halloween.

We were fortunate that nothing fell on the roof, which is always a concern, living underneath the pine giants that we do.

One other thing we are grateful for following the storm is a new (if temporary) play area that the fallen trees have made for the boys.
They are having a blast climbing around on the tree branches, and swinging from the limbs.  And without the risk of falling from a dangerous height, we are watching them explore and climb and pretend to their hearts' content.  They come inside smiling from ear to ear, smelling like fresh air and trees -