A Year in the Making

So I checked Ravelry (isn’t that site just so wonderful!) and I realized I started these socks on July 2, 2009, yes, that’s right, 2009!! I just finished them on the 22nd of August. Over a year in the making! I definitely got a case of second sock syndrome with these. Funny thing is, the second sock didn’t take that long at all. I worked on it in VT (top down to the heel) and then again this weekend in WV (heel to toe) and waa-laa, finished!

Now, I will say, I will never take this long to do a pair of socks again, there is a noticeable (if only to me and other knitters) difference in gauge! Whoops! One sock slides over so well – the new one – the old one takes a bit more work, but it’s the perfect definition of a well fitting sock. I like snug socks, no bunches, gathers or droopy cuffs for me!

Details:
Faceted Rib Sock from Little Box of Socks
Sunshine Yarns Soft Sock Yarn
US 1 1/2 needles – I used the Hiya Hiya small circulars, which I love and then used DPN’s around the heel

What I’ve Been Working On…

This post is super late because I was so remiss on taking pictures, I know a lot of people love that part, I loath that part…I’m terrible at it!

There’s been some knitting and sewing ’round these parts lately….I’ve still got lots on the to-do list though! I like it that way!

I finished these baby slippers a while back, just never bothered to take a picture of them. I really just did them to see how the pattern worked out. I’ve got tons of sock yarn leftovers so these would be perfect. Of course, I knit a girly pair and everyone is having boys lately!

Pattern: Magic Slippers
Yarn: Sock yarn leftovers – love these colors
Made For: The next baby girl I know to be born!

Bubby Girl got a new toy as well – this super soft and snuggly sheep. Her name is Mary (get it?!) The best part about this, it was from leftovers as well – super cute and quick and used up leftovers, my kind of project!!


Pattern: Lamb from Itty Bitty Toys This book is full of awesome patterns! I can’t wait to make more!
Yarn: Leftovers of Berroco Plush and Sublime Organic Cotton DK – I doubled the Organic Cotton throughout
Made for: Bubby Girl

As much as I dreaded it, I took my Colorful Sock on the road to VT….it was going to be about 10 hours, so I needed some knitting. Can you believe I never knit a stitch on the way up!? Going North from MD is not fun. Tons of tolls, I’m talking probably $30 on the way up and pretty close on the way back! Ugh! I don’t even like turnpikes! Then detouring around the George Washington Bridge in NY – best thing we ever did, only added about 15 minutes to the trip, if that, and absolutely NO traffic. No trucks, tractor trailers, and all that craziness trying to get on the dumb bridge! Loved it!
But while we were there, I got lots of knitting done – and ended up finishing one of the socks…now if I could just go back on vacation and finish the other one! Ha! This is the perfect pattern for this very highly colored yarn. Love it! And this pattern lends to very thick, warm socks, which is nice too! Not a fan of the heel, but I followed the pattern because who wants to deviate while on vacation – definitely not me! Look for the second one to be finished sometime before Christmas!

Project Modern

I guess I could always try right? I can’t wait to see the beautiful projects that will come out of this!

Well look at that…

Check this out….Sew Picture Perfect

Picture #3….hey, that’s my lovely little Dresden Plate table topper!

Here’s my original post on it. It’s pretty cool to have your stuff somewhere other than your own blog!

Pizza for dinner, pizza for dessert!

My latest cake creation – a pizza!

(pretend like the wax paper isn’t there – we thought we were going out to dinner, and I was going to have them bring the cake out, so I needed some way to move it easily – I just forgot to take off the excess before snapping a shot – remember, I was on a time crunch!!)

My father-in-law loves pizza, I mean, LOVES PIZZA!! Even my 2 year old knows it’s his favorite food, so of course, I had to make him a pizza cake!! Crazy part was, I had to make it at their house, in 2 hours! Yikes! I baked the cake at my house, then did everything else at their house. Needless to say, there wasn’t a whole lot of room for error. And the best part is, he usually just eats pepperoni pizza, making the toppings even easier!

The funny thing is, we asked what he wanted for dinner and he said, pizza! Wow, how convenient!

Here’s the skinny –
Basic Betty Crocker cake, baked in a deep dish stoneware pan
Whipped icing from Wilton – note to self, this has no flavor, buttercream is so much better!! I just used this thinking it would be easier since I wouldn’t have a lot of time to mess around with making icing
The sauce was piping gel dyed red
Cheese was ivory colored fondant, rolled and sliced very thin
Pepperoni was very tricky to get just the right color, thankfully there was some real pepperoni in the freezer and the color in mine was almost perfect (might be hard to tell in the photo, but it was right on!)

All in all, it was a big hit and lots of fun to make!

Vermont

What a busy and hot summer so far! Most of the day is spent outside with Bubby Girl either riding her bike, playing in her new sandbox or her pool, which is definitely refreshing on these hot summer days! We were spoiled on vacation in Vermont where the temps maybe grazed the 70’s but stayed in the 60’s most of the time. We stayed at the most beautiful place – The Wildflower Inn, in Lyndonville.

This was our third time to VT, but only our second time staying at the inn….but you can guarantee we’ll be back! We absolutely love it there, and so does Lila. She was in the Butterfly, Tots and Forget-Me-Nots program and they kept her busy and happy all week. Let me just tell you, this place has the best breakfast! It’s fantastic! Actually, everything about this place is fantastic! The people, the food, the rooms, but the best part – the view! It’s incredible!

Mommy and Daddy were so happy that she was happy, and we got to enjoy some of the finest mountain biking in the east, Kingdom Trails. If you haven’t been – just go. Thanks to the Wildflower Inn, I got a very awesome private lesson from Lilias of IdeRide and my skills have soared since!! Yay for me as I can finally get my front wheel off the ground, on demand! Still working on the bunny hop, but I know it’ll come! First we headed over to the pump track to work on some skills – lots of fun! Here’s Bubby Girl on her Strider riding one of the skinnies – can I just say, she’s awesome!


And here’s me on my last ride of Kitchel – this trail is incredible. There’s a video on the IdeRide website that shows them working on this trail. The last trip down it, I got AIR!! I mean, lots of air (for me at least) It was incredible, and I did it on purpose, which was even better. This is when I really knew my lesson with Lilias was going to pay off big time!

(picture disclaimer – there are tons of awesome places to take pictures of people coming down this trail, however, that means the person riding the trail looses all the flow and momentum of the trail and since you can’t hike back up, it makes it really un-fun! So Bear took a series of pictures on this turn, this one shows the trail the best – I wish you could see more! Do a google search on Kitchel Trail and Kingdom Trails and check out some of the videos – so much fun!!)

We rode at Rosaryville State Park this past weekend and Bear rode behind me for a lot of the trail (not standard operating procedure for us because I get freaked out and try to ride too hard). However, not this time – there were times where he had to really push to catch me! Yay! He said he noticed a HUGE difference in my riding! I must say, ladies, if you are in the Northeast Kingdom and you mountain bike, call Lilias, she’s awesome!

And of course, as customary when we go north, we look for moose – my favorite animal. We headed up towards Island Pond, and there we found them! And this is usually how we see them – standing right in the middle of the road. These animals are HUGE!
Can you see it?!

How about now?

We also headed out in the local area and found the Sanderson’s cute little farm and bowl shop and lucky us – we got there at a great time – check out this baby donkey – he was 4 days old!! Cutest animal I think I’ve ever seen, I was trying to figure out how we could bring him home!! Bubby was grumpy and pretending to be scared, but let me tell you, nothing to be afraid of, he was the sweetest little guy!

And here’s one of my favorite shots of the week – this was our view outside of our room at the Wildflower.

All and all, a perfectly awesome week! This is the kind of place you never want to leave (not sure I’d want to be there in the winter though!). We will definitely be back, many more times. Vermont is absolutely gorgeous and we joke about having a summer house there! It was hard to drive south on the way home and just watch the temperature rise and rise….when we left it was in the 60’s in VT, when we got home it was somewhere around 93!! Ugh!!

Sea World

The day after Disney we headed to Sea World, which was a much more relaxing day! It was about 10 minutes away on a trolley and much less crowded! Of course, the first thing we went to see was Barbara Manatee – Veggie Tales anyone?! Of course we came home with a mini stuffed manatee and t-shirt!!

Then we just kind of wandered around, at our own pace and enjoyed the beautiful weather and all the animals! It wasn’t nearly as stressful being by myself at Sea World as it was at Disney, but I was still recovering from Disney the day before!! There was only 1 ride Bubby could get on, and after the rides we rode at Disney, it was just plain pitiful! But she loved the animals – here’s my favorite picture the day.

That’s her on the left, not sure if that little girl was holding her hand or trying to move her out of the way! But if you ask her who the big whale is at Sea World, she’ll shout SHAM-BU!!

All in all it was such a wonderful trip, definitely a whirlwind though as we tried to do a lot in a short amount of time. Well worth – I highly suggest wives tagging along on their husbands business trips!

Disney World!!

This trip was about 2 months ago! Gasp! I’m just now getting around to posting about it! I’m terrible!

With about 2 weeks notice, we planned, packed and flew to Disney World! Bear had to travel to Orlando for a conference, so we tagged along. Needless to say, I was nervous!! We have an extremely energetic child who never stops (yes, that’s right, she rarely takes naps, and only does so in the comfort of her own bed), so the thought of airport lines, flying, and Disney World sans Bear was a bit scary, but I knew it was doable, so we did it! And I am so glad we did!!

The airport wasn’t too bad, a drawn out lunch kept the Bub occupied. And surprisingly, she was wonderful on the flight! A sticker book and some crayons lasted almost the whole 2 hours!

Getting her to sleep that night was a different story. She’s really too big for a pack-n-play, but we hadn’t made a transition to a big bed yet, so in the pack-n-play she had to go. We turned off all the lights and stayed really quiet and out of sight. And what cute little sentence comes out of the dark in the middle of the night?! “Mommy, this is not my bedroom!!!!”

So on to Disney the next day. It was beautiful weather and just a teeny bit stressful getting there, but not too bad. It’s such a process though and took about an hour from our hotel to the gate (the actual gate, not the train station) of Disney. And we quickly learned a lesson. You do not travel to Disney during the week before Easter, aka Spring Break. Whew! We heard they actually closed the gates and stopped letting people in it was that crowded!!! The day didn’t start too great though, I dropped my camera on the first right – Aladdin’s Magic Carpets and as if the loud crash it made onto the metal wasn’t bad enough, it fell into the crack that went to the water under the ride. Thankfully I had the camcorder as well and it takes good pictures outside! However, I wasn’t going to let that ruin my day. It was me and my 2 year old at Disney World! We had to have a good time! We rode a lot of rides, and had tons of fun, then went home in the afternoon to pick up Daddy-O from his conference, then headed back and rode some more rides! The wait times were up to 2 hours for even the kiddie rides, so that was kind of a bummer, but it was still so much fun. Bubby Girl could only ride so many things, so it wasn’t too bad.
I needed a little rest, so Bear took Bub on the race cars and boy did she have fun!! I love this picture of the two of them, and her trying to see over the steering wheel!

I also have a great video of her, when she saw me, she took both hands off the wheel to wave, it was too cute!!
If you ask Lila what her favorite ride as Disney was, she’ll answer “The RollerCoaster!” It was Goofy’s Barnstormer, and it was pretty impressive for kiddie coaster!

There aren’t a lot of pictures because wrangling a 2 year old by yourself at Disney World on one of the most crowded days in the world just doesn’t allow for it. It’s amazing what you don’t see through the lens of a camera!

Dresden Plate

I love the Sew Mama Sew blog and get so much inspiration from there, the problem with me is, I have inspiration overload and time deficiency! But I did see something I loved and just had to make it, so I dove right in and was surprised at how quickly it went. I used the Dresden Plate tutorial by Elizabeth Hartman from Oh, Fransson! and I love how it turned out! It’s the perfect little table topper, especially since my curtains are from the center fabric!

I can definitely see me doing more of these, the possibilities are endless, and a large quilt with them would be manageable and fun!

I have finished up some other projects – gasp! Okay, I can really only think of two right now, so I’ll have to take some pics and post on them soon. And I have an exciting trip we took at the end of March to post about as well!

Kayak Cake

Disclaimer – I am by no means a Bakerella or anything, although I do adore her work!! Bear’s birthday was about a month ago – March 8th. I’ve started a new tradition with him and Bubby Girl, it’s all about the birthday cake!! Well, for me at least! I love making personal, themed cakes. And so here was Bear’s this year. He’s a whitewater kayaker, so he was deserving of a cake that looked like his kayak. He paddles a Pyranha Burn – this is me in it a few years ago, not a great picture of me, cheesin’ a bit for the camera.

So, that’s what I went off of. It was my first time with stacking cakes, and using fondant, so I made a HUGE mess, and everything was dyed blue thanks to the watery icing. The cake is more orange than the actual kayak, but hey, lets blame the dyes on that one!! But it was fun, and I learned a lot. Mostly that I like the vanilla icing way better than the chocolate (the cake inside is chocolate with dark chocolate icing). It was also fun using my new stand mixer than I got for my birthday, which I adore – breadmaking is now a breeze, but that’s another post!



Notice the marbled fondant! Yay me, that was actually lots of fun getting the color to move around. And those are rocks in the water, they looked more realistic in real life!
But all in all, he was surprised and it was lots of fun. There will definitely be more fun cakes in the future!