Posts Tagged ‘easy’
I finished this knitting project last night for my mom. She asked if I would make her a bunch of kitchen dishcloths, which made me really excited. (Maybe she’s just humoring me, LOL!) They’re incredibly fast and easy. Sometime I’d like to try a tip that my friend Marilyn recently told me about. Wal-Mart’s craft department sells this threadlike stuff ~ it’s intended for a ballerina tutu or a wedding gown, to make the material somewhat pouffy. (I’d never heard of it before, but Marilyn bought some that’s green and said that there are different colors.) She holds this thread along with her yarn when she’s knitting a dishcloth, and it makes the dishcloth very scrubby. I felt one of her dishcloths, and it was like an exfoliant! Perfect for scrubbing dried grime off dishes (and probably lots of other household uses). I’m going to find some of that stuff the next time I’m there. One of my next knitting projects will be an Indiana dishcloth, and I’m very excited about that!
I’m so excited about making snowflake-shaped sugar cookies today. I have navy blue and royal blue coloring, and I’m going to tint the cookies a pale blue. I also have clear, sparkly, edible glitter and some crystal sugar. I’ll probably leave some of the frosting white, too. The dough is chilling in the refrigerator. There’s a cookie exchange on Tuesday during my moms’ group meeting (where everyone comes home with three dozen different kinds of cookies, depending on how many participate!), and I’ll probably freeze some for our train station’s holiday party on the 13th. Now I just have to discipline myself not to eat too many cookies and gain a zillion pounds! These cookies have two cups of sugar and one cup of shortening ~ talk about fat and calorie overload!
By the way, we received our very first Christmas card: from our friends Vicky and Natalie. They hand-delivered it to us when they came over for Thanksgiving. :) Our first Christmas card in the mail was from fellow blogger Connie. Thank you very much! I love picking up our mail this time of year! So where’s the farthest away that you’re sending a Christmas card? I guess that ours would be relatives in California.
The only thing I have going on today is a meeting about this calendar that I’m designing, and hopefully I’ll be finished with it very soon. I feel like I can’t start on Christmas projects until it’s done. We’re almost there, though. I did address some Christmas cards last night, though, and I also stayed up late knitting. :) I’m working on a new project … Grandmother’s Favorite Dishcloth. It’s really easy so far ~ I haven’t managed to screw it up yet, but there’s still time! :)
P.S. If you’re looking for a foot-related Christmas gift for someone special (yeah, I’m not kidding!), here’s a website that has pretty much everything you can possibly imagine that relates to the feet (including special splints to help with Plantar Fasciitis). Actually, they have some socks that look super comfy ~ and look at this gadget that lets you take a walk while you’re sitting down! I need one of those for when I’m tied to the computer doing freelance work!
I’m *really* proud of how well I’m doing with learning how to knit. First, I put together just a small square for some practice, and then I tried another pretty new yarn. Sure, I’ve had to “frog” lots of times (did you catch that ~ I learned a new knitting word last night, LOL!). But I’m trying to be patient and go easy on myself because this is all so new. Last night, I practiced some purl stitches but was unsuccessful. I think that I need to watch a video online again in order to get it right. It’s so wonderful to have a craft that I can pick up so easily where I left off (which is essential when you have two young children!). When I get the purl thing right, I’m going to try my very first pattern: a waffle-stitch washcloth. It seems pretty easy, and if it turns out OK, it might be a nice little Christmas gift along with one of my handmade soaps. But I’m not getting my hopes up too high. I doubt that it’ll look as nice as the one in the photo! LOL! :) I want to see whether we have any cool yarn stores nearby, too. You know, all I really want to do today is sit on the futon in our bonus room and knit while the kids play. But nothing much would get done then, huh?
And now for a completely random note: I *really* admire people who enter the medical field. It’s something that I just couldn’t do. My friend Theresa is an xray technician in Indiana, and she has been working *really* hard with her career. It takes such a special person to care for others in that way. I have to take Meredith for the second part of her flu shot this Friday, and sometime I also need to schedule her lead check at the hospital (Luke had the same thing done when he turned two). I also have a routine physical in February, which I’m *so* not looking forward to! But it’s always good to get checked out. My cholesterol levels were *really* awesome last year, so I’m curious to see what they’re like now (hopefully the same).
Gotta go ~ this calendar project is calling my name. I’m *almost* done with it (which is a good thing, considering it’s already December!). I need to work on the cover and then print everything out to make sure that there are no mistakes. I’m waiting on some more information from our neighbor, too, in order to finish it. And when Luke goes to preschool this afternoon, Meri and I are going to make a grocery store trip. We are *seriously* out of food (unless a small box of brown rice and a few onions count, LOL!). Can’t make much with that!
My experience at SuperCuts this morning was awful. I took Meredith with me because I thought that she would be easier to keep track of than Lucas. When I walked in and told the lady that I’d like to get my hair cut, she looked at Meri, frowned, and said, “I can’t have her running around.” I said yes, that I hoped she would sit nicely on my lap during my haircut (which she did).
I sat down and showed the stylist a photo of Martha Stewart’s hairstyle, and she said, “Oh, that’ll be easy.” I told her that I had been trying to grow my hair out, and she replied in a nasty tone, “Why? For a pony tail or something?” Nice. And I kid you not … she made five or six snips and that was it. Rubbed some pumpkin-scented leave-in conditioner into my hair, and she was done. I told her not to be afraid to go quite a bit shorter with my length, but she said, “No ~ that’s all you need.” Huh? Thanks *so* much for listening to me.
Well, while Meredith was in my lap, I asked the stylist about whether we should trim her bangs and the sides of her hair, around her ears. She suggested that we just trim her bangs a little bit, and I said that was fine. I asked her, “Would you mind saving a piece of her hair, then, since this is technically her very first haircut?” She said sure. But when she started cutting, she just kind of let Meredith’s hair fall to the ground. I was *so* mad. I realize that her hair is thin and fine and that trimming her bangs didn’t involve much hair cutting, but a huge chunk of it fell down onto the floor. She just kind of blew it off and mumbled, “Sorry.” I wasn’t about to pick it up because the floor was somewhat dirty.
For a woman who has four children, she was certainly pretty rude to me and to Meredith. My haircut cost $15, and it was a *total* waste. (I even had a sale coupon for $3 off, so it was really $18. I could have bought this and been much happier.) Everything is expensive these days, and I don’t want to spend money on something that I don’t want or on bad customer service. Now I have a “haircut” that looks pretty much like it did before. I’m still mad about the whole thing. Generally, I don’t like to complain, but I think that SuperCuts will be hearing from me soon.
As I mentioned before, my sophomore year college roommate is coming to visit on Thursday and is staying with us until Sunday. Pretty much all of our meals are covered (I figure that sandwich-type stuff will do for lunches ~ or going out to eat). But dinner is another story. I’d like to make a yummy meal for us to enjoy on Thursday evening. (Friday night, we might take her out to eat at our local café, and Saturday night will probably be cookout leftovers.) I just don’t know what to fix. (Funny … tons of clipped recipes in our kitchen but yet I just don’t know which one to choose!)
It would be great to find a dinner dish that’s relatively quick and easy to put together (because I’d rather talk with Claire instead of dealing with a bunch of complicated ingredients in the kitchen). But I’d also like a “wow” factor, too, you know? It’s somewhat difficult because I don’t know what Claire and her daughter like to eat, not to mention whether they have any food allergies (I totally forgot to ask her). I suppose that the dish should be pretty kid friendly, too. Something in the slow cooker would work, and maybe something kind of summery.
Everyone likes pasta, right? Maybe a nice pasta dish with yummy bread and salad? No clue yet about dessert. I thought that I would ask you culinary types out here in blogland to find out whether you’ve fixed any awesome dinner recipes lately or know of some cool links where I could find some. I’ll probably go grocery shopping tomorrow (or even tonight on the way home after dealing with my stupid speeding ticket!). Thanks in advance!
And speaking of food, I’m off to fix the kiddos their lunches. PB&J, here I come! :)
