Making a Good Birthday Party

Whip up some cake early in the morning:

(This photo makes me feel like SuperMum, but since Daddy was upstairs sleeping in, and Althea loves to be a part of everything, this worked well)

Make some icing, and test it to make sure it tastes good.  Watch the baby have her first sugar rush, then decorate the cake with skates, mittens, snowflakes, one candle and some snow.

 Head out to Bowness Lagoon for some skating with friends:

Watch your little baby who turned one love, love, love the skating and ice!

 

 

A Year in Photos

January 2011

 February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Birthday Cake!!

Odd Ball Sweater – plus 3 New

 I had what seemed like a bunch of yarn left over from Althea’s baby blanket that I vaguely remember making in the first month of her birth, and I decided it would be a lovely little colourful sweater.  That part is true.  I had enough yarn it turns out for the yoke of the sweater, and had to purchase 3 more skeins to finish it off.  I keep using this pattern for baby sweaters as it is simple, and resizable based on yarn choice.  When you use worsted and add some length to the arms and torso you get a sweater that still fits my (almost) 1 year old. 

The many different colours in the body of the sweater are due to the fact that every time I went back to get say, another light pink, there were no more left.  Therefore the arms became dark pink.  Very colourful my daughter.  The trade off is that it goes with many of her outfits now, just not the red ones. 

There is however a serious design flaw, one that means we have to be very careful with this sweater, and that it needs to be guarded and watched almost at all times.  Can you spot it?  Look closely.  Here is a front view, maybe that will help:

It’s those cute wooden buttons.  I had assumd they would be poplar, or aspen, or some other harmless wood, but they seem to be made of catnip trees.  Both my cats are ga ga over these buttons, and will seek out this sweater, and try and gnaw the buttons off.  Jack has already pulled out numerous threads from the front (without the baby in it) as he uses all four paws in an attempt to rip the buttons off and eat/roll/collect them.  I have a spare button in my notions case that they will now seek out as well and attack.  Cats are crazy yo.

1st Christmas Stocking

This year, the year of first Christmas’s, there were a lot of things I wanted to do, and a lot of things that I didn’t get done.  I didn’t get Mr. J’s present finished (only really 1/4 of the way), I didn’t even finish Althea’s present, even though now it is being blocked and waiting for buttons. (Birthday present?).  I didn’t do the baking I had promised Mr. J, I didn’t make the big dinner for Christmas Eve that is traditional in his family (we made it Boxing Day).  We had pie instead, just pie, no dinner.  (But if GGM asks, we had  a full turkey dinner with all the fixings, and sourkraut soup as is their tradition).  Here on my last day of vacation I still have a daunting list of things I had wanted to do.  One thing I did do: spend time with my family, let things go to stop stressing out, and get Althea’s stocking done on time.

 I still cannot believe how well this turned out, as I’m not a very good sewer.  I cut out all the pieces according to the pattern that I managed to snag, as the Christmas patterns were in short supply, found some letter patterns online for the name, had to go back for batting.  In nothing short of a miracle my sewing machine sewed through a number of layers of material and batting.  I had a really hard time figuring out the pattern, but somehow it worked, and the last step where I turned the lining inside out to reveal a finished stocking was nothing short of a Christmas miracle.  I really liked the lining, which is material that is slated for my and Mr. J’s stocking (that will hopefully be finished for next year).

 My stocking will have little mittens, and Mr. J wasn’t too keen on his until I pointed out it had balls (Christmas) on it.  He then deemed it manly enough.  We filled the baby’s stocking with an apple, orange, some cookies, socks, and Mum-mum’s.  She was particularly enamored of the apple, and not so happy with the bite of the orange she took.  We then peeled it and she was more impressed.  I taught Mr. J how to put out cookies, milk, and carrots for the reindeer (which he promptly turned into light sabers and had a little fight with his daughter, sigh, boys).   Althea hung her stocking with care. 

 And a perfect first Christmas, without all the other stuff, was born.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, filled with teeny tiny miracles, like your sewing machine working when you really need it.