Growing Things

A table full of plants: free.
Thanks to our landlord for making letting me take care of all his plants while he's gone (yeah, he said he was going to Ukraine in September when we moved in, but several delays, postponed flights, and suspicions about whether-or-not-he-was-going-to-leave later, he did... in april).

A plant ladder: also free.
Thanks Pinterest for the idea and the landlord for leaving this ladder here. Because he was totally going to take it with him, just like the plants, right?

Awesome Peruvian llama and alpaca collection: thanks dad! I really must get a better picture of them.

Finally filling in the empty spaces in the picture frame we got for our wedding: priceless.
How wonderful is it that we've grown our family to include another member? 

Actually, the price is that we have to look at these really horrid pictures of ourselves every time we walk past. Good incentive to get some family pictures done, right? It's on my to-do list.

Until then, ugh.

So during the last few weeks I've gone kind of plant crazy. Our landlord left several sprawling geraniums, a few elephant ear plants, some kalanchoe, Christmas cactus, and a horrible old aloe vera. I've sort of dedicated my time to trying to make these plants look a little better.

For starters, the aloe plant had twelve or so pups growing off of it. I was able to separate those and pot them up. Most of them look really well now. The mother plant is looking better too, but I don't think there's anything I can do for the awful sprawl.

It has to be supported by another planter. Yikes!

Next, the geraniums (blooming in red, white, and two shades of pink) look like weeds (look at how tall the one in the very first picture is). Seriously, they're ugly. I'm trying to get them to bush out more by cutting off a few of the taller sections and making those into their own plants. I think I may have been too gentle and I need to trim them even further. Gorgeous blooms though.

The Christmas cactus is a horrid old woody plant, but boy does it have some fabulous blooms in the winter. I trimmed that way back and I'm giving away a ton of the pieces as starts.

I complain, but it really is nice to be surrounded by so much greenery. It's exciting having things growing all around you. Between the plants and the baby, growing things pretty much rule my world right now.

Christmas Star

Yay for me, I'm getting an early start on the holidays this year. Starting off the festivities, I'm righting a wrong from Christmas past.

Last year was our first real Christmas on our own. Just over two weeks out from my due date, we decided it would probably be better to stay home for the holidays instead of traveling to my parent's place or elsewhere. I mean, having a baby on the ten hour car ride to my parent's sounded fun, but at the same time...

So we got a real tree. Here it is, Christmas morning, in all of it's bad picture quality glory:

Thanks to my amazing sis-in-law for the adorable stockings!

Beautiful, yes? I had a blast decorating it with all the ornaments and snowflakes and lights my mom had given me when I got married. You may notice something woefully wrong with this picture though. That's right, you adept reader who read the title of this post, there is no star!

Duh duh DUUUHHHH!

I was going to make one, but then I never got around to it, or I forgot. Woe is me. So this year, I resolved to find or make one. Because I get stuff done (ahem).

So I was browsing the racks at DI the other day, and I happened upon a spool of silver wire ribbon. It appeared to have a decent amount left, and the thought occurred to me that I could make a star with it! For last year's ornament exchange I made a bunch of German Christmas Stars (or Swedish, otherwise known as Froebel stars). I was inspired by this pin on Pinterest.

Thanks Martha Stewart!

Gorgeous, right? Unfortunately, this Martha Stewart creation has confusing directions. I really prefer to follow pictures for something like this. So I found this amazing tutorial, and followed that (the link gives a bit of history and some pretty pictures, then has a link to the instructions).

Anyways, I just love these stars, and once you've made two or three, you pretty much have it memorized and don't need the instructions anymore. You can make them anywhere. You could even pre-cut paper or ribbon and make them in the car, at the doctor's office, etc. I wanted the ones I made to be semi-permanent, so I made them out of ribbon instead of paper, like Martha Stewart did.

Pros: I feel like they will be a bit more crush resistant if they get thrown into a box of Christmas decor. Also, ribbon is perfectly pre-cut to the right width, you just have to cut it to length. Ribbon is forgiving if you fold it in the wrong spot.

Cons: Unless you select a really crisp, papery ribbon, it doesn't really fold as nicely as paper does. You won't get the crisp edges you would with paper. I worked my way around this by using a straightening iron (like you use on hair- a regular iron could work, but would be bulky, obviously) to press the folds where I wanted them to be flat and crisp. It worked really well, but you have to be mindful of not accidentally melting your ribbon at very high heats. It didn't happen to me, but just be mindful of the possibility. Another con is that Ribbon can be expensive, so unless you're shopping the sales, or have a ton on hand, this may not be the best option.

Picture to break the monotony of all these words.

OK, so all that aside, my next dilemma was that the width of ribbon I was using for my tree topper star is 1 1/2", which is about twice the size of what I was using for my smaller ones. Clearly the length had to be different.

I did some googling, and I can't remember where (sorry!), but I found that the ratio of width to length for my cut pieces (before they are folded in half) is 1:24. So for every inch wide, the ribbon pieces had to be 24 inches long. I have found that this can be fudged slightly, but don't go too much shorter. I got really lucky, and the amount of ribbon I had on the spool was perfect. 

So I folded it up, and got this lovely 6 1/2" beauty.

A bit of trimming and glue-gunning , and I have my finished star! I pull the ends through a bit before trimming to make sure they don't stick out at all, and if you're worried about fraying ribbon, you can try melting the ends when you do this.

Yay! I love it! I don't know how I'll attach it to the top of next year's tree yet, but I have a lot of time to figure that out. Until then, I guess I can make a whole bunch more mini ones to make it feel at home. I'll post some more pictures when I figure that out, as well as something to show scale.

Then I get to wondering, on a semi-unlreated note, do most people top their trees with stars, or angels? I think I personally prefer stars. Thoughts?

Oh yeah! I had a baby!

Yay! here's the "I had my baby" post, just about four months after the fact.

Michael Orion was born January 20th at 3:56 AM after putting me through a day or so of non-progressive, excruciating back labor. After going in to the hospital, being sent home because I was only at a 3 (poo!), and going in again the next day around the same time, still at a 3, I decided the epidural was the thing for me. And boy, was it bliss. After that, labor went really well, and before I knew it, I was holding my beautiful baby boy in my arms and feeling very blessed to have had such a relatively smooth experience. I am so thankful for modern medicine. I probably would have been too exhausted by the time I got to push if I hadn't been able to get the much needed sleep enabled by that epidural.

It's crazy (albeit cliche) how fast the days have gone by, but my baby is already almost four months old (just a few more days!), and he really is a sweetheart. He's smiling a lot, cooing, grunting, and even giggling now. He loves mornings, waking up several times a night to eat, and going for walks now that the weather is nicer. He is the most beautiful blend of me and Steve. I am undoubtably biased, but I think he's pretty darn adorable.

Ok, that's enough sappy fawning over my little cherub (you know, the kind that drools and doesn't sleep well at night). Here are a couple of pictures. Over and out.

Everything you didn't want to know about my pregnancy

Warning: Long, wordy post with no pictures ahead. Proceed with caution.

We celebrated our three year anniversary this year and had a good time of it. We went out to eat at Da Pineapple Grill, a local restaurant that has the most amazing tangy pineapple chicken that I can't help but order every time we go there, got ourselves a waffle cone maker, and just had a good time. A couple of days later, bright and early in the morning before I had to go open up at Jack in the Box, I took a pregnancy test. Lo and behold, it was positive! I immediately woke Steve up (it's like, 5:30 in the am) and he's all, "What?! really?" because I guess I'm a little bit of a pregnancy hypochondriac, and every little twinge is a pregnancy symptom ("ow, my foot hurts, I must be pregnant!" etc.). Anyways, that's my "how I found out" story. Thankfully it was around our anniversary so I can remember when I found out too.

I've been feeling really well throughout. I feel a little guilty, like I should have been really sick or something, but then I smack myself around a bit and tell myself I don't have any major karma coming back to get me, and I'm able to be grateful for the fun experience being pregnant has been. I'm still able to enjoy some pretty good mobility, and I had no morning sickness, so I think I can consider myself blessed.

The closest thing I had to being sick was if I stayed up too late in the first trimester, or didn't have something digesting at all times I would feel pretty rotten, but those were both very easy fixes. I only felt nauseous for about two minutes, like one time. And it was minor. Now that I'm in the beginning of part of the third trimester (wait, what?!) I do feel like I just did about a hundred thousand (million-billion) crunches, and I have no lower abdominal muscles. If I had to do ten sit-ups to save my life I'd probably die at around three. I feel a little like a beached whale when I have to get out of bed some mornings. There's a lot of flopping and rolling and grunting and hoping I don't accidentally crack my head open on the bedside table. Good times. Living with me must seem like living with my 85 year old grandma, just with a little less memory loss.

So that's probably enough whining for now. I'm 26 weeks along, due January 14, which I'm really happy about because it meant I wasn't eight months pregnant in the middle of July, and winter is just my very favorite season. There's something so wonderful about cold air, fresh snow (especially if it's deep!) and the serenity that can come with it. I think it's worth the wait through summer and fall every year just to see the first dusting of snow on the ground. And when everything-- all the dead trees and messy lawns and dirty roads-- gets covered in the first good snowfall, it's like the world is pure and soft and beautiful. I'm just excited to have another winter birthday besides my own, and to have someone else to share it with. Maybe my baby will love winter like I do.

Ahem, rambling aside, I may have neglected to mention that the baby is a boy! My sister was rooting for a boy so any other chitlins we had would have an older brother. I'm excited, but it's WAY more difficult for me and Steve to agree on boy names than girl names, and that is my major disappointment. Heck, we all but had a girl name on a birth certificate, and then he had to go and be a boy. I am absolutely stumped as far as names go, and it is very frustrating. I guess we'll have to see what he looks like when he's born if we can't decide on one before then. But what am I even saying? Who wrote the rule that said you had to have a name picked out for your baby before he was even born? That's right, there is no rule, and if we have to call him "Baby" for the first couple of weeks of his life, then so be it. Grr.

So that is my story, life is good, being pregnant isn't so bad. I really enjoy feeling him move around, even if it does make me think of that one movie with the aliens that pop out of peoples stomachs ("rarr!"). Maybe by the next time I post I'll have a couple of names to throw out there. Le sigh.

Oh hey, we graduated!

You heard right! We are official graduates of Brigham Young University -- Idaho. It actually happened in April, so you can see that the procrastination problem has only gotten worse. But anyways, congratulations to us! Now here are some groovy pictures of us in silly gowns to prove that it actually happened.

 

Look! See how excited we are to be done with school?!

 

Does this gown make my butt look big?

 

Ok, we're not in the gowns in this one- sorry! I know I promised you'd see silly gowns, but I just couldn't resist-- isn't Steve so cute?

 

Gargoyles!

So yeah, that's my story for today. In case anyone was wondering and didn't know, we were both art majors; I was illustration, Steve was graphic design.

The End

So, I Learned How to Crochet, and everything else that's happened in the last long while.

Many apologies for the extended hiatus from the blog, I have no excuse. Well, except I got busy with school, and then the Rubezahl book from the last post sucked up ALL my time, and my poor little fingers hurt so much from cutting page after endless page out that I just couldn't make them type out blog posts. Then once I was really and truly out of the routine, I just felt like I couldn't go back. But here I am once again, happy to be a little more free because it's summer. So much for having no excuse.

I have been busy. Really. I got a job at Jack in the Box, and let me tell you, fast food is a lot more work than I ever thought it would be. It was really kicking my trash those first few weeks (it still is, just not so bad). I would come home from work and have no desire to do anything except (maybe) eat and go to bed. It's a lot better now that I'm used to being on my feet for longer periods of time, but yeah. I'm just so happy to have a job this summer.

So after a month or so I started to get bored doing nothing with my life except for eating, sleeping, working at jack in the box, and aimlessly perusing the internet for whatever was left of my day. I needed some change in the routine. The desire and initiative to actually do something different started when I discovered Ravelry, the online Mecca of Knitting and Crocheting. This site has just about a bajillion patterns on it, a ton of them are free, and there are so stinkin' many cute ones! A lot of times homemade knit and crochet stuff can look so very, very homemade, and just kind of clunky and meh. I have never been exposed to so much awesomeness for free! Something had to be done of course, I couldn't just let all those free patterns go to waste! But alas, I had no mad skills in the knitting or crocheting department.

So I made a trip to my local library, where I found a wonderful book, The Happy Hooker, by Debbie Stoller. The title caught my eye. I found it to be very easy to read and learn from; it had clear directions and splendid illustrations to accompany them. In no time I was crocheting to my little heart's content, then frogging it all out, then crocheting some more, then frogging again, all using the same half a ball of yarn that I bought at DI last semester for a group project making sock puppets. I had learned to crochet, and a whole new world of crafty possibilities is now open to me.

I had to begin right away.
I went back to Ravelry, where I found the most adorable and delightful pair of crochet slippers you could ever imagine! If you are so inclined to crochet (or even knitting), the pattern can be found here. Being my very first time following a crochet pattern, I obviously had a couple minor struggles. It wasn't until I had basically given up on the first slipper finishing the way I thought it was supposed to that I realized I was doing a single crochet stitch where it was telling me to chain. Duh. Me thinking, "No wonder my counting is so off!" But I was so ready to try felting these stupid slippers that I just let it be (hey, it still looked like a passable slipper to me) and did the second one the incorrect way as well. Just so the wrong one wouldn't feel like such an outsider.

Enough of me talking though, here are the pictures of my lovely new slippers!

 

The toe is beautifully rounded, so cute on my happy little feet! I found the little decoration thing at DI. They're actually a pair of clip on earrings that I just clipped on through the crochet stitches. I thought they worked very well, and the little bit of sparkle in my life makes me happy.

 

When I makes these slippers again I'll know to follow the pattern correctly, which will save me a lot of grief and frustration. Also, I'll be sure to felt them a little longer (It took two cycles to get them to this size and look. They're a little bigger than I thought they were, and I wouldn't mind if they looked a little more felted too).

So that's all I have to post about right now, but I have been working on other little projects too, so I'll be back for sure. Sorry about the super wordy post.

Until next time.

Rubezahl

Here is one of the pages of a book I am working on for my cut illustration book, Rubezahl. I'm really excited about the way this is turning out so far, but it is taking so much more time than I thought it would. More pictures when I finish it.

 

It's just set against a colored piece of cardstock in this picture. The paper I cut the illustration from is Mohawk superfine.