Chef Messy

today show day!

(Aww, I miss that little face.  He seems huge to me these days!)

OK, so they will probably just mention me in passing, but I am still excited.  They are going to be talking about this project during the 9:00 hour.  So, if you are watching, keep your ears open!

And if you happen to be arriving here from there, here are a few of my favorite posts from the past, just to give you a little glimpse of who we are.

But before I get to that, you can see some new and improved crayon hearts here, here, and here.

Also, there are some really fun Valentine DIY projects here.

OK, favorite posts...

This is, hands down, the most popular post on my blog.  You can see the tutorial on how to make your own board book here.

If you are looking for more crafts to do with kids, Easter is also coming up.

This was fun.

And this was fun.

I am really proud of this quilt.

But had more fun with this quilt!

This is my favorite knitting project.

This was also a fun project.

And these are my kids.  I made them myself, and they are adorable.  Crap sleepers, but adorable.

A few randoms...

Because I could not pick just one post abot this...  We live in Idaho, and yes, I come from a potato farm.

A post about whether or not Mormons make cupcakes as often as we say we do.

What it's like to have a C-Section.  (I also have many, many posts on infertility, miscarriage, and miserable pregnancies, which have been a big part of life around here, so I feel like I should mention it.  But since I can hardly call those my favorites, I won't post them here.  If that's something that might help you, though, you can go looking for it here.)

These posts are the real reason I keep a blog, and they will always make me laugh when I am having a bad day.

Thanks for stopping by!

 

 

in which i lose my craft room to fighting boys and co-sleeping girls

Once upon a time, my blissful mental picture of my future family involved two brothers that would happily share a room.  Two twin beds, side by side...  Matching quilts...  A place for all the toys, which would, of course, be happily shared...

Even though I only had one kid when I found this house, I bought it with that nice little mental picture in mind.  As long as we had less than four kids, they could happily share the two small bedrooms upstairs, meaning the downstairs bedroom was reserved all for me and my mountain of fabric.

Fast forward several years, two kids, and one reality check later, and that lovely little bubble of thought has popped.  Because my boys, despite the six-year age gap, fight nonstop.  All the time.  Without cease.

It's SO surprising to me!  They are in two different stages of life.  What on earth can they possibly have to fight about?  And yet, every time I turn around, Matthew is using that one judo move he knows to throw Jonah over his shoulder and onto the floor, or Jonah is throwing a train at Matthew's head.  They fight over toys.  They fight over space.  They fight over the piano and food and how many more M&M's one of them had than the other one.

Drives me bananas, it does.

And the reason this is room-sharing (or not) situation is all complicated is that I have reached the point where I really want Sofie out of my bed.

Co-sleeping.  It's awesome in those early months, especially if you are recovering from a C-Section and nursing and all that.  But at five months, babies get it all figured out.  They know that "crying it out" is always going to end up in their favor because they are right next to your head.  They know that any time you roll over or sneeze or blink or twitch, this signals an invitation to wide-awake 2 a.m. party time.  At five months, co-sleeping makes an abrupt and noisy transition from warm, snuggly extra snoozing with a little squishy newborn to the seventh hell of baby sleep positions.

I love her.  She is adorable.  But I want her OUT of my bed.

And herein lies the problem.  Matt is in the big room.  Jonah is in the tiny one.  Plan A of moving Jonah into Matt's room turns out to be a really horrible idea.   So, bottom line, not only I am losing the battle of keeping the peace and sleeping, I am also losing my sewing space.

Oh, well.  First world problems.

So, as I'm plotting the big move and planning a new room for Matt, I am realizing how much I really love Pinterest.  SO handy, that Pinterest.  I spent a while today going through ideas, trying to figure out what to do with paint, furniture, bedding, etc.

I love that all of these ideas are in one place!  I used to keep books like this.  I'd spend hours tearing photos out of magazines, pasting them in.  So, Pinterest is pretty much the new idea book, except for that it is easier and cheaper and you don't have to worry about reglueing everything when your glue dots lose their stick.  I don't even think I have a magazine subscription anymore.  (I wonder how much the magazine industry hates the Internet, and blogs, and Pinterest, which have collectively rendered them somewhat obsolete.)

So, as I'm looking at these photos, I'm thinking that this room is going to have to involve gray paint and stripes, with a pop of color thrown in somewhere.  Matthew keeps lobbying for me to paint the entire room fire engine red, which is not going to happen, but I'm still trying to get his input so that it will be a space that he likes.  Decorating is fun.  It sortof takes the sting out of losing my crafting space.

As for figuring out what to do with all of my fabric, and my sewing tables, and my computer desk, and everything else that has piled up in that room, Pinterest is a little lacking in ideas there.  Hmm...

(Photo credits: All from this board.  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12)

a quilt, in the dark, at my house

So, how's everybody?

All is well here.  School was a good idea.  At the very least, it gets me out of the house a couple of days a week, and I am learning all kinds of things about transvestites (yes, I'm serious) that I never knew before, so that's exciting.  Today, I found myself sortof guiltily lingering in the Rendezvous building after class.  It's so clean there... And quiet... And there is a starbucks, and there are Rugby girls selling cupcakes (did you know there were Rugby girls?  I didn't!)... And it's SO quiet... I LOVE quiet.

I'm sure I will feel differently when midterms rolls around, but I'm enjoying having an excuse to hang out all by myself for a couple of hours here and there.  But then, of course, I came home and had eighty-five reasons to laugh between 9:00 a.m. and naptime, which reminds me why I do this, why I stay home most of the time.  Jonah's latest funny joke is to call whoever he can get on speed dial and announce to them, "Mommy's naked!"  If you get a random phone call from my house, I can assure you that all my clothes are on, thank you very much.  Still, I have to laugh.  Sometimes, being a mom is so fun, even when your entire social network wonders if you have become a nudist.

In other news, I'm completely ready for January to be over.  I am so done with dark and gloomy!  It makes for sad blogging (which, you know, is the important thing...).  I think I need to repaint my house all white on the inside, or something, because it's SO dark in here!  This is my best case scenario...

Blegh.  Gloomy.  I hate January.

So, as far as this quilt goes, this is the best we could do.

Also, thank you to my very tall assistants.  (And, yes, we have baby paraphernalia and clutter all over my house.  We live here.)

Seriously, this is my favorite thing I've ever made.  If I weren't so excited to mail it off to its recipient, I'd be sad to mail it off to its recipient.  (I kindof want to keep it.)  I have to say that this quilt was 50% inspired by Alicia Paulson.  I recently saw a funny conversation on Facebook.  I have this friend who knows how to do everything already (as in, she makes her own yogurt and knows how to match plaids).  Anyway, she had a goal to learn to do something new this year, so she was asking us all what she should do.  And someone suggested quilting, which led to a discussion on what is proper quilting and what isn't.  Apparently, if you piece a quilt top, it is only proper to hand-quilt it, the old-fashioned way.  Well, I've already done that, and it is NOT for me!  So, thank you, Alicia, for giving us all permission to tie!  Seriously, I was done with this in less than an hour, as opposed to the months-long "proper" quilt of doom.  Also, I don't know if I would have been brave enough to try the random grabbing of pieces out of the scrap bin without her.  The other 50% of inspiration credit goes to Denyse Schmidt, queen of wonk.  I love wonk.

Even though I tied the quilt, I still handstitched the binding.  I know there are ways to machine-stitch this on, but they all look overly-complicated, and I wouldn't trust myself to be able to sew them on straight.  I love the look of hand-stitched binding.  Plus, honestly, isn't it kindof nice to have a good excuse to curl up on the couch with a good movie for a little while?  (I never have time to do that anymore.)

Well, that was fun.  On to the next thing...

A random little tidbit of info.  Next week (1/30, during the 9:00 hour, to be exact), there is a possibility that ChefMessy.com is going to be mentioned in passing on the Today show!  And that's almost as good as being a celebrity, right?  Haha.  Well, if you're watching that morning, anyway, keep an eye out.  It sounds like they are planning a fun segment - I was excited to be included.

 

mischief of one kind and another

Yesterday, to keep Jonah occupied while I was getting my Sociology reading done, I let him sit at the table with a set of watercolors and paint.

And then, he was so cute painting that I went downstairs to grab my camera so that I could take a picture.

And then, when I came back upstairs, I had a beautifully decorated textbook.

When I resell it to Amazon, I think I will charge them extra for the custom artwork.

i show you dese mittens

Because, these days, a plain old blog photo isn't good enough, Jonah would like to help demonstrate a not-so-recent (actually from Christmas last year, and I just swiped them back so I could post them to Ravelry) project.  Dialogue here is accurate and unembellished.

"You gots mittens?  You gonna take a picture dese mittens?"

"I show you dese mittens.  I puttem on."

"See?  Look at that one!"  (He says exactly this about pretty much everything.)

"Dese are nice mittens.  Dey are cute mittens."

(And, yes, his hands are that grubby.  We've been painting.)

"I show you so you take dis picture."

Thank you, Jonah.  You are incredibly helpful, as always.

For the knitting crowd:

Pattern: Fingerless Flower Gloves by Kristin Nicholas

Yarn: Cascade 220

Needles: Size 7 dpns

Made for my mom.

Ravelry!

And a photo of what they look like on a grownup...

 

it's getting there

I am loving it so much!

Now.  I just have to decide three things:

1) What color binding?  My mom thinks aqua, but I am leaning toward black gingham or something along those lines.

2) What color backing?  Flannel, maybe?

3) Should I REALLY give it away?  (Yes, I should.  But I do love it...)  Ah, you didn't know this was a gift, did you!  I shouldn't have fessed up, haha.

helpers

I've got the squares all done.  And, really, there's so much randomness going on that laying it out and getting it organized for sewing just seems silly.  But that's what I'm doing now.

And, let me tell you, I've got the best helpers ever on this project.

Why, thank you for your assistance.

 

january blahs

I think it happens every year.  January hits, and I get the blahs.  Winter is still going, but the holidays aren't.  The house is still recovering from the Christmas wreck (where, oh where, to put all of these toys...).  The weather is cold and gray (but not snowy).  Matt goes back to school.  I get through week one of failing at my New Year's resolutions and get in a funk about my complete lack of ability to follow through with anything.

And the days are so dark...

I become a grouchy little hermit every January.

I'm not too alarmed about it, though.  I know it's only temporary.  I always feel better by February, when the days get longer and enough time has passed for me to remember that New Year's Resolutions are stupid.  (The best year I ever had was the year I resolved not to resolve anything.  Why do we always feel like our goals need to be dictated by the calendar?)

All the same, I've got this list of things that are putting me in a funk.  It's the same list as usual, but this year I'm working really hard to be proactive about it, rather than just retreating to my cave and feeling sad.  So, here are a list of things I am doing to combat the January blahs.

1. I chopped ten inches off my hair.

Because, at about 3 months post-Sofia, all of my hair fell out.  My hair is thin to begin with (thank you, PCOS), but in the last month it has been falling out in handfuls (thank you, Sofia).  Also, I had fallen into that new mom trap of putting my hair in a bun every single day.  So, not only have I been feeling frumpy, but I've been feeling BALD and frumpy.  Ryan took this photo of me over Christmas that was shocking in it's baldness.  I seriously almost cried.

So, I took a deep breath, called a friend who cuts hair, and said, "Chop away, lady."

And then I spent the whole next day lamenting the loss of ten inches of hair, because ten inches of hair takes three years to grow (at least, this is my very scientific estimate), and feeling sad that it will be months before I will have any use for a ponytail holder.

But that's just silly, right?  I'm happy with it now.  Or, at the very least, I'm getting used to it.  (If you want a really good haircut, shoot me an email and I will give you my friend's phone number.)

2. I went back to school.

Not because I need to (long story short - I already finished a Poli Sci program at USU, which is useless for my purposes, but I digress...), but because it forces me to get out and be social, and to learn new things, and to not be a hermit.  (Hermit is definitely my default status.  I'm a complete homebody, especially now that going anywhere requires either a babysitter or multiple carseats.)

And yes, I probably have enough going on around here without adding school to the mix, but I like school.  I'm a nerd that way.

Anyway, I walked into class this morning (Intro to Social Work, which is something I'm sortof interested in), and my professor is this guy with 4 different colors of hair dye.  And I'm talking FUN hair dye - black, blue, red, and gray.  And he has tattoos and multi-colored fingernail polish.  His explanation is that his New Year's resolution was to have more fun.  I don't see how this class could possibly be anything other than completely awesome with that sort of beginning.

3. I am saying no to running.

Originally, the plan was to start running this year.  I even got new running shoes for Christmas.  So, on January 2, I hit the road, thinking of all of the friends I have who are good runners.  And somewhere around mile 0.6 (yes, I'm serious), I asked myself, "Why am I running?  I hate running."  And I thought of this...

(via Pinterest)

So, now, I'm just saying yes to Wii Zumba instead.  Because exercise should be fun, not a death march (which is exactly, to me, what running feels like).

(If only I could say no to housecleaning...)

4. I am using Jonah's telemarketing skills to get people to hang out with us.

Last week, when Jonah called one of our speed-dial friends four dozen times within about ten minutes (a frequent occurence at our house), I used the chance to ask them to go to dinner with us, which is something I've been meaning to do but never get around to.  And as we were waiting for them at Five Guys, and one kid was whining, and another kid was drawing crayon pictures on a potato bag, and another kid was about to have a meltdown because she wanted to eat right that minute, I was wondering, "Why did I think this was a good idea?"

But then, we ignored our kids for a full hour (I'm sure the Five Guys potato bags will just end up in the trash, anyhow) and got to have grownup conversation and had a really good time.

So, if Jonah calls you, just assume that it's because we want to hang out.

5. I'm making a point to enjoy these guys. Every day.

Maybe not every minute of every day, of course.  (I'm sure everyone's already read this post, but if you haven't, you should.)  For example, I don't particularly enjoy the 2:25 a.m. moment when Sofia is awake and ready to party, again, for the third time since we put her to bed.  (Yep, two completely awesome sleepers in a row.  It feels like I haven't slept in YEARS!)  But, overall, there are so many moments every day when they make me smile.  I'm trying to catch those moments and pay attention and be grateful.

February will come.  The days will get longer.  Snow is more of a mess than not.  Goals can be set (and reset) any time.  Life is good.  I am marching forward.

 

this cool thing ryan made me

Since I have a million seams to press in the process of making these, I have been really enjoying one of my Christmas gifts from Ryan.

This thing? Best idea ever.

It's an ironing board, made from a TV tray.  You plop it right next to your chair while you are sewing, and you are good to go.  Cool, right?  He used this tutorial, except he used thumb tacks instead of staples.  Go, crafty Ryan.  Handiest gift ever.

see 'dis ladybug?

"See dis?  Dat my ladybug.  See, he goes 'Bzz!  Bzz, bzz, bzzzzzzzzz.'"

"Wow, Jonah, that is a nice ladybug."

"Yeah.  Das a cute ladybug, huh?"

"Yep.  Can I have the sharpie back now?"

sofia at four months

is the happiest baby ever, as long as she has a full belly.

has awesomely chubby legs.

does not like the taste (it passes, you know) of peppermint, gingerbread, or eggnog.  there was never a sadder christmas around here for me...

laughs at the song "little bunny foo foo."

laughs at pretty much anything her brothers do.

is rather patient with getting frequently squished by jonah.

is getting quite chatty.

talks with a growly, funny little voice.

isn't a big snuggler.  likes to be held so that she can see the world.

is not a great sleeper at night (unless you let her sleep right in your armpit), but at least takes decent naps.

has the biggest smile I've ever seen.

is quiet, but has a cute little sense of humor.

has a surprisingly big temper for a quiet person.

lost all of her hair a couple months ago, but is getting it back (it's red!).

likes to wear a dress so she can grab the hems and wave it around.

is picky about her blankets.

does not love the carseat.

does not love the wrap, either (which makes me a little sad).

but definitely loves to be packed around, particularly by Matthew, who loves her best (he says).

except I love her best.

lil' alpaca

I'm a little late showing you this, but qué será.  Figured I better do it before all of the Christmas decorations came down (which, who are we kidding, probably won't happen until February).

We have a family tradition of passing out a significant ornament to each family member on Christmas Eve.  Ideally, it's supposed to represent something that happened or something that we did that year.  Since Ryan went to Bolivia for his first time this year, I really, really, really wanted to find him a llama ornament (because, obviously, Bolivia is all about llamas, isn't it?).

Sadly, the only llama I found that was even halfway cute was selling on Etsy for $30, which was totalling about $10 per square inch.  Too much.

So, I decided (two days before Christmas, of course), that I would make my own!  Well, an alpaca, anyway.  Same-ish thing.

Meet Ryan's little Christmas alpaca...

I really don't know how to crochet, but since ami patterns only involve single crochet and have lots of room for error, I figured I could handle this one.  He's kindof a cute little dude, isn't he?  A little crazy-haired maybe, but I guess that's how alpacas (alpaci?) are.

Well, hello, there, crazy hair...

Details for the yarn crowd:

Pattern: Alpaca Amigurumi from Planet June (easy peasy with good, clear instructions - a good one for a beginner like me).

Yarn: Cascade Sport (because I wanted a smaller alpaca than what would come from the recommended worsted weight), plus random scraps for the mat (which was knit in garter stitch).

Needle: Um...Size D?  I think?

Ravelry!