It’s official.

Today we signed all of the papers.

Today we sold our house.

 It’s been an interesting year.

And I wouldn’t trade any of it for anything.

I’m looking forward to what lies ahead.

I first saw a knitting pattern on ebay for a kitty hat several years ago, and instantly fell in love.

I mean, what’s not to love and adore about this hat?

I knew I had to have it, but I wasn’t alone in my obsession and the bidding got downright maniacal. So I went in search of the (at the time) hard to find, vintage, out of print pattern elsewhere. Never mind that I am a horrible knitter. Bad. Very bad. Nevertheless, I had to have that pattern. I was determined. I mean, duh, we’re talking about a kitty cat hat in all of its classic, retro, adorable glory. There was nothing left to do but find that pattern. And I did (woo-hoo!). But sadly, I never managed to work up the courage to try my hand at knitting it (boo-hoo). Now, here I am, kitty hat-less, despondent, with a life left in ruins. Ok, none of those things I just said, but I have always regretted never attempting that pattern. My little girl would have been so cute in it! Heck, even my little boy would have rocked it, that hat is to-die-for adorable! So imagine my extreme happiness when this sweet giveaway was announced…

(click on the pic for more info)

There is still a chance for me and kitty cat hat happiness! And (bonus!) hers are so much cuter than the one I had originally seen. So of course here I am, posting about it, so even more people try to win it, lessening my chances for eternal kitty hat bliss. Seriously, could that hat be any cuter? (Her adorable little model sure doesn’t hurt either, what a little doll baby!)

I tried my hand the other day at making some of those really fun reversible fabric headbands. After only ruining one (you would think I know better than to try to sew AND pay attention to my kidlets…), I managed to go on and make 3 others correctly. I’m still hoping to salvage my first mangled attempt with a few snips and some more sewing, but if not, life goes on doesn’t it.

I looked at several sites, and found a great pattern template ‘here’ that you can print out yourself, sized in adult and child. As for instructions, I skimmed over a few other sites to make sure I got the general idea, and ended up making them the way I felt most comfortable. I ended up ‘here’ and ‘here’ when I was looking for more tutorials, and felt these were also worth reading to get the whole idea. There really is no right or wrong way to make these, just your way.

In making my headbands I used regular cotton quilting/printed fabric, a mid weight fusible interfacing to give them shape and body, about 6-7 inches of 1/2″ -inch elastic per headband, and I added a sort of scrunchy sleeve to cover the elastic band at the back. As for assembling them? I did it my own way, and it all worked out, these have a lot of leeway for mistakes, and are not hard to unpick if you are not happy with the results.

And yes, I used Hannah Montana fabric for one of the headbands. What can I say, she is very, very popular right now with a certain daughter of mine. I can only surmise that this Hannah thing started at school, since I know we never watched her show here at home, and don’t own any of her music. Which makes it even more unsettling when I hear this daughter of mine singing some of HM’s songs. Despite my best efforts, we have been infiltrated.

6 years.

That’s how long we have lived here.

We moved into this house on Labor Day weekend, and now 6 years later, we are preparing to move out of it.

We are set to sign the papers on friday. After everything that has happened, I know we would be ok if this all goes belly up at the last second, but I really doubt it will. It looks like we are really going to move this time

so far so good…

Now if only we could find the right house for ourselves to buy, I might feel better about all of this. So far, we aren’t really sure what the plan will be.

This is shaping up to be more and more interesting every day.

Or crazy. Either one.

Crepes have long been a favorite, starting from when my Dad would make them as a special treat for us when I was growing up, to now when I make them for my own kidlets.

They are so easy to make, using simple ingredients that are kitchen staples- milk, eggs, flour salt and butter. I have tried many different recipes with great results each time, but discovered that no matter which recipe I made, I need to chill the batter for at least 1 hour before using it, ensuring the best results.

 The most recent recipe I used with great results was ‘this one’, which makes a large batch. I tripled the recipe and filled this jug…

Um, yeah, I know, that’s a lot of batter.

but I used it to make lots and lots of these…

We had them for a special treat on Monday for the first day of school.

Our favorite toppings for crepes are the ever simple and classic butter and sugar, (sometimes with lemon juice brushed on after the butter and before the sugar is sprinkled over top), and sometimes if we’re really feeling decadent, we throw caution (and our scale) to the wind and go for the Nutella, with or without sliced bananas. It’s too good.

Just a quick note to let you know that I will be moving my family posts to a private blog in the coming weeks, but I will leave this blog up for my posts on sewing, cooking, crafty stuff, and generalizations of my family. So this blog will remain the same with no changes, except for the absence of the overly informative family blurbs. This way I will feel less weird about posting my kids names and personal info about our fam on the world wide web for all to see (yeah, you know I’m paranoid). So, if you would like to continue reading about our family stuff, please either email me or let me know in the comments or otherwise, and I will get the necessary info to you as soon as I change it all over (unless you’re sick of me, then this could be the perfect opportunity to be rid of me once and for all!). This blog will remain up, and accessible to anyone though, and will hopefully be updated more often now that school is starting next week. This year I will have 5 of my 7 in school. Now that’s just going to be weird.

The ‘Crafty Crow‘ featured yet another fun idea on their blog, and I thought it was a great idea for a memory matching game, that is, if you have easy access to lots of seashells.

Although I have seen them sold by the bag in several different stores around here, so I am willing to bet I could get everything without much of a hassle so my kidlets could make a set of their own too.

I also saw ‘this‘ on the ‘Toby Show blog‘ and wanted to pass it on too, I love it!

She printed off a set of her own cards to make an ‘animal matching game’ from the ‘Jan Brett’ website, laminating them and everything. I am loving the hedgehog and the billy goat, seriously, I mean how cute are these!

The ‘Jan Brett’ website has a bunch of different activities and stuff that are free and ready for you to print off yourself. With so many of her books being heavy favorites at our house, I knew my kids would really enjoy games and pictures featuring familiar characters and such from her stories. I’m already looking through my stash to see if I might possibly have some cardstock squirreled away somewhere, and with honor copy open 24/7, I could even have these done by tonight. Although frankly, it wouldn’t be much fun making a midnight run to the copy store without Heidi. I’m not even sure I could work the laminating machine without her. She’s a genius that way you know.

We had a lovely weekend with incredibly cool summer temps, not too hot, and with light breezes throughout the day. Loved it! I could live year round in this kind of mild weather. But eventually I would miss the other 3 seasons, so I am happy to enjoy this while it lasts.

I recently bought my very first pair of pinking shears.

And no, I haven’t the faintest idea why I waited this long to finally buy myself a pair, they’re so handy to have, and fun to use. Nerd.

I bought them so I could make these from the ‘Crafty Crow’ blog…

These are so simple. I bought two boxes of Kleenex brand tissues in the upright box (which we emptied of tissues in record time due to allergies and a random summer cold that hit hard recently), took 1/4 of a yard from 6 different brightly colored cotton prints, washed and dried them, cut them into approximate tissue sized shapes (I ended up with 4 squares from each 1/4 yard), pinked the edges to prevent fraying, divided them up between the two empty tissue boxes, and voila! This was such a great idea, and Finn totally loves it! (many thanks to ‘The Toby Show’ for sharing this cool idea!)

Saturday morning found us displaced as the buyers needed a few hours with the house to give their parents the grand tour of their future digs. So we headed in to visit with my family and made a day of it. On the way in we stopped off at the little zoo/park and had fun walking around for a bit. Then we spent the entire rest of the day just hanging out at my parents place. The weather was gorgeous, and we ended up outside the majority of the day, watching the kids play as we sprawled out on a large blanket laid out on the grass in the shade. My children played all day with several of their cousins, as well as a few neighbor kids that we have gotten to know very well over these many months of visiting. It was one of the few days we have had where we didn’t have a single thing planned, and no pressing need to rush anywhere. It was so nice to find some time to decompress.

This next week will be busy though, and so ends the relaxation, because as most of you know, we have once again sold our house. And when I say “sold” I mean we are under contract and will sign the final papers in less time than previously thought, as the buyers have just asked for a faster closing date by 10 days. And don’t even ask if we have found a house for ourselves yet, because we haven’t, and I don’t even want to go there right now. Even though I should. But I’m tired of thinking about it over and over again, trying to figure this all out. We will get there eventually.

Hope everyone else had a great weekend, and that the weather is as nice in your neck of the woods as it has been in ours!

I love the Crafty Crow blog, and check it regularly for fun ideas and things to do/make, with/for my kidlets. These are a few of their recently featured projects that are currently on my list of projects that I would love to do…

 As soon as I saw this project, I loved it! (this is the one I was going on and on about yesterday Korby) And now I am dying to try my own hand at making some. Seriously, how cool are these! I love a fun and simple project, and with results like this, my kids could have some original, fun, and funky shirts for back-to-school, and I could have some fun with freezer paper and an exacto knife. Oh the possibilities!

Finley loves pulling baby wipe after baby wipe out of the container, and flinging them all over until he has successfully emptied the container. Oh the naughty. So when I saw this project, I knew it would be just the thing for Finn.

I thought this project looked like a really fun activity that any of my kidlets could do themselves. I love seeing what they come up with as they paint, draw and create, and I also think it would be fun to frame and hang their finished masterpieces as she suggested in her post.

And this project instantly set my mind spinning as I thought of the super fun possibilities. I have tons of artwork from each of my kidlets safely stashed away, the pieces I felt were the most “keepsake”, and I think this would be such a fun way to “save” them, maybe make into a sort of remembrance quilt for each child featuring their own artwork.

And these….

yeah, I don’t think I even need to explain why I want to make these.

My mom used to cook a lot of chicken when we were growing up. Almost all of it was whole, cooked in a large pot of boiling water, then artfully picking through to get to the meat once it had cooled a bit. My mom is very good at getting every last bit of meat, she has done this so many times and really knows her way around a whole chicken. She’s a total pro. I have always meant to do this myself, but for some reason I just never did. Until now. But I wanted to use my crock pot instead as I didn’t want to have to watch a pot on the stove, so I looked it up online and found ‘this recipe’. It was not only easy, but the chicken was delicious and I was able to use some of the meat in a recipe for dinner that night, with enough leftover to freeze for another time. I really loved that the skin is removed before you cook it, lowering the fat content, as well as upping the healthy factor. Gotta love that. And if you prefer an even easier method, you can skip all of the ingredients from the above linked recipe, and just chuck your whole chicken into your crock pot with some chicken broth, or even just water, and let it cook that way too. I like versatility in cooking, it’s nice to have more than one way to get something done.