Thursday, January 28, 2010

Crafty again!

I spent the better part of today online trying to figure out pattern to tie dye my brothers sweatshirt. Then I realized there was a woot-off going on so I looked at that. Of course one thing lead to another and before I realized it I was online for nearly an hour and a half.

Anyway, I did get the laundry started, kitchen cleaned up somewhat and the sweatshirt tie dyed in what I hope to be is an acceptable pattern. If it doesn't turn out it's all good because he was going to throw the shirt away anyway.

On another bright side, while on the world wide web, I discovered that for around $2,000 we can get Brandon a newer/nicer car. His car has taken a beating and keeps just keeps going, but now I think it will cost us a good amount to get it working again after his accident yesterday. It's all good because we can use the parts off the car. Thrifty! I just don't think buying a brand new is a good idea just yet. We'll see.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

We will miss you Sprynger. You always put a smile on my face.

Friday, January 22, 2010

This crazy week!

While this week hasn't been too crazy, it's been reasonably long. Every night we work on Caleb's dino project, have dinner, work on the project more and then watch a TV show or two while Joel nurses. Joel caught a cold so he is nursing much much more than he did last week, but I'm loving every minute of it since I'm not sure which time will be the last.

So, with the new year we've taken on a new healthy resolution which was to stop eating any processed food. Yup, I'm talking all fast food and anything at the grocery that is already prepared. So those cans of soup or frozen pizzas we all have in our cupboard are off limits to us now. Surely this will be a process since I ran out of homemade chicken stock and needed to open up a box to finish off my chicken dish earlier this week. Overall, we are doing really well because we've decided once or twice a week I would provide us with a homemade dessert as well, but I'm having a hard time coming up with ideas.

On the other hand we eat so much yogurt, that I've learned how to make my own so it's not packed full of sugar and other processed food ingredients. I was also finding that a lot of the yogurt I was eating had diet ingredients which I was my fault for not reading the label, but I get terrible headaches from NutraSweet and the like. So, now I know exactly what is my yogurt.

My yogurt was 4 cups milk scalded and cooled. Mixed in 1/2 cup organic plain yogurt with live active cultures and then put into a warmed oven for 5ish hours. I took it out and cooled in the refrigerator overnight and for breakfast we had a nice yummy bowl of yogurt covered with homemade granola and homemade raspberry jam. Thinking about it is making me hungry.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Like I said, I've taken on knitting again. It's going well. I joined ravelry.com today and I think I'll really like it. I had been looking to knit up some sweaters for the new puppy and I found some cool patterns on there today. Woohoo.

As for this puppy I mentioned, he is doing really well. I officially named him Sparky simply because he looks so cute running. Haha. Sparky went to the vet and did wonderful, but they are telling me I must get him fixed at 6 months. I thought I'd wait till he was bigger and find a different vet. DH has a cousin who is a vet and I would trust him much more. Anyway, we had Lex fixed when he was 6ish months and it didn't go well. Lex came home the next day and had an infection and was really sick. Ugg! So... those are my thoughts on that!

On another front, I have been thinking about homeschooling more and more. Caleb has been working on a cool dino project for the last few weeks and it's driving me mad. I guess I would rather see him start from the beginning. I would have handed him a 1st grade sized book and have him find the answers to some basic questions just to learn how to do research. Then I would have write a report from that and so on. Nope, he needed to use 2 sources of his choice for research and was given some very specific questions to answer in his written report. Best of all he needs to also come up with a presentation to share with the class. Heck, when did school get so ahh...

Monday, January 11, 2010

Good times!

So, I didn't get any of my sewing projects done for Christmas like I planned, but I have started knitting again. Fun times! Hopefully, I will get to putting pictures up sometime soon since I took them. Haha!

My goal for today is to finally finish laundry that was started on Friday and get the kitchen clean. I wanted to start a chore chart so everyone knew what rooms I was cleaning on what days, but I found that I spend so much time just picking up that I don't know how that would work.

Puppy! We/I got a new puppy for Christmas and it's doing really well. Lex loves the company and it suddenly very playful. Maybe now he will lose some of that winter weight he put on last winter. I named the puppy Sparky simply because you have to see it run. Haha! Caleb liked the name Ace and so for now it has two names. Sparky already got his first groom and looks more like a dog now. I'm just excited to see how big he really gets. We were told he would top out at 4 pounds. Woohoo!

So for now we will keep trudging one and I hope everyone is doing well!