It must have been very hungry

Meet our dinosaurHe is a very cool toy if you are under 3 ft tall, you take the balls which you can see in the turtle (another cool toy) and put them into the holes on the top and they come tumbling or rolling out of different places on his body. OK I admit this can be a fun toy if you are a bit taller than 3 ft also. All that rolling and tumbling makes a Dino very hungry and what better snack than........

Crayola coloring crayons. You can see here that we have a very well balanced diet as we have a whole rainbow to choose from.

And yes he was very, very hungry.

The talented cook.

Bowl of Blossoms

Fresh out of my garden.

Newborn Jumper

Catching up on the few things I have made in the past few months. This jumper is in the shop .

I made ten jumpers a while back and am still working on them. Olivia wears one and it is a favorite outfit the others are in various stages of completion, waiting for the prefect embellishment to call their name.....

Tutu

I put this together when we first got over here. I'm hoping to add some to my shop at some point when I can orders some more tulle. As it is I have ordered a whole load of things in the last week and will need to wait until the next pay check to have some more spending money ;).

These make wonderful dress up clothes for little girls and Olivia has a ball wearing what she called "Twinkle, Twinkle" the first time she put it on.

My SIL Devan uses them for props in her photography and they come out sooo cute.

Well that's all for now Olivia is down for a nap and I'm going to get some work done. Have a great day everyone.

What, I have a blog?

OK so I know it's been forever since I updated here and I have a whole long list of excuses, really. To start with my old computer died a very sudden and tragic death. The video card and hard drive both went at the same time. I was very attached to that computer, I also had not back anything up on it so I lost a lot. Luckily Justin had transferred the pictures we had taken of Olivia over to his computer so we did not loose those, but everything else was gone. We bought a new computer right away but I do not like this one the primary reason being that it does not have an SD card reader which makes blogging and posting things for sale on ETSY rather inconvenient. I have found the cord for my camera however I don't like that process as well as I like popping the SD card into the computer and getting the pictures that I needed.




Add into that finishing up with our move and well that just made life a little more stressed, but we are done with that for a while now and settled into our new house for the most part. Sometime I will post pictures as I know there are some out here who want to see it.




Before we left the States we spent three weeks with our family in Illinois we had a wonderful time and got to spend a lot of time with my brothers and their wives. I love having sisters after having had only my brothers for so long its so nice to have sisters to hang out with and do fun girl type stuff with. My youngest brothers wife and I went off a couple of times and did girl things like searching Joann's for the prefect fabric for a pettieskirt (I'm getting a foot in the mail to make it Devan I haven't forgotten) or going to a tea house to eat. We also all went out to a local pub for dinner and some drinks, it was so nice to be together too bad we are all over the world.






Devan also took some awesome family pictures of us.

When we got here we pretty much focused on finding a house and settling in. Well that's done now and I finally have a room that I can sew in so you can look for postings hopefully to be more frequent both on here and in my shop.



Now to leave you with the latest item in my shop this clothes pin apron.

Because a girl just can't have too many bags

I was purging old clothes to put away new ones that I purchased today so Olivia played in my room (because playing with Mommies things are so much better than playing with her toys). She decided to take out all of my purses and apparently couldn't decide which one was better, or she had a lot of things she wanted to carry :). This isn't the only thing she played with, I put away several drawers and shelves that were emptied before I got my job done :).

How Cute is this

Olivia is growing so much, physically and cognitively. She is really starting to do some cute things.
This morning I wasn't feeling well, DH gave me a quick back rub before he left for work (too much floor scrubbing yesterday). As he was giving me the back rub Olivia came up and rubbed my feet, just like I do when she is feeling icky.
This afternoon DH was doing some grooming on our Persian cat. The cat does not like to be groomed and was whining. The whole time Olivia sat at the gate into the kitchen and stared and whined right along with the cat.
She has also started patting our back when she wants her back patted, and letting us know that she needs a diaper change.
So much fun!

Additions

I added some items to my side bar.
The first being a link to my sister-in-law's web page. She does awesome photography. The portiates of Olivia I have posted here were done by her, she also did our family picture.
I also added some of the blogs that I read.
Enjoy!

Hat and Scarf

I taught myself to knit several years ago to help get through a winter deployment. That first project was a sweater, it's still sitting in my knitting basket just about done. I lost track of where I was at on the last sleeve, someday I will attempt to figure out where I was at.

I did finish this project though, I made she scarf in a garter stitch, it's OK, it has some holes from dropping stitches and it's wider at one end because of the dropped stitches. The hat was so simple and other than taking time to finding the proper needles it only took me a few hours to make.

House Hunting

One of the perks of being a military family is that we get to move every few years.
One of the down sides of being a military family is that we move every few years.
I guess it depends on how you look at it. Our move is getting closer and as it does I am looking more at the options for houses that await us at the other side of the "Pond".

We have two main options Government housing which can be on or off base (as far away as 45 min) and very small (650 sq ft-1200 sq ft) or living "on the economy" meaning that we live in town in a British house and get a housing allowance. The first option, because of DH's rank and our family size, will put us in a two bedroom house where ever they have room until our family grows then we will be moved up until 4 bedroom housing (because that's as big as they get). The second option we are given a set amount of money to shop for housing and get something that will work for us size, location, amenities. Since we have lived in a 3 bedroom house or the equivalent for the last six years and do not really want to down grade and then move one or more times we are choosing door number two. I had my choice made with some out of pocket expense and a little longer commute than DH would have liked but it looked like it would fit us well and give us room to grow. Then with the new year came a higher housing allowance meaning we can afford to live closer to the bases and possible get most of my wish list for housing which include

• Recent build or remodel 4-5 bedroom (I have been living in a remodel for the last four years I would like my home to look clean with minimal effort and older homes just don't have that)
• A study for a sewing room (if it's a five bedroom it does not need this)
• A master bathroom (this is an upgrade from the one bath we have now and would hopefully allow Olivia to sleep longer in the morning since we would not be making noise right next to her door)
• Half bath downstairs (because I don't want to be stuck upstairs when I get pregnant again)
• A dryer inside and/or a utility room (Many of the houses I have looked at online do not look like there is a vent for the dryer in the house, here in the states I cannot line dry clothes because of allergies, I'm not sure about there)
• A gas cook top (I just prefer this)
• Fenced Yard so the puppies do not get out.
• Some storage space
• I think a conservatory would be cool but it's not a must.

So that's my list for some it may sound like a large house but it doesn't come up to much more than the average American split level, the bedrooms are small, were talking 8X6 or smaller in most cases for the 3rd and 4th rooms and the biggest master I have seen in our price range is about 12x11 slightly larger than the bedroom we have now.

I'm glad for two things in this process. The Internet, which allows me to get a feel for what is available before we even move over there, and the fact that we are moving to an area that we are familiar with. With any luck I'm just a couple of moves away from my dream home.

Helping a grieving Mother

~Courteous people are empathetic-able to relate emotionally to the feelings of others. They listen closely to what people say. They observe what is going on around them and register what they see. A self centered person might say ,"I know exactly how you feel" to someone in a traumatic situation and then immediately start describing his own experiences. An empathetic person is more likely to say something like, "I can't know how you feel right now, but I can understand your grief [or anger or sadness]. And if you want to talk about it I'm here to listen." -Emily Post Etiquette 17th Edition, Peggy Post~

When a pregnancy loss occurs the stories of others losses often come out of the wood work. While there is nothing wrong with sharing your personal story of grief and recovery with a mother whose world has just fallen apart there are some ways to go about it that are better than others.

In my own experience I had many people who approached me and told me how sorry they were to hear of my loss and that they knew how I felt, they had loss a pregnancy also. While I smiled and listened to their condolences I really wanted to tell them they had know way of knowing how I felt. They could understand part of they sadness, the anger, the longing in my heart but their experiences were not the same as mine. Except online I did not encounter a woman who had lost a child due to my condition (a cervix that is too week to hold a baby to term). Most of the women that told me their stories had miscarried very early and after having had one or two children. I do not discount their grief, however, that is a very different experience from your first and second children being carried almost to a point that they could have survived, and holding them in your arms.

The best condolence I received was after my first loss when a neighbor of mine who had experience seven early miscarriages had stopped at my house for something. During the course of our conversation she told me that she didn't know how I did it (dealt with the grief of losing a baby at nearly five months along), all the while I could not imagine being her losing one baby after another and having no idea why my body would not hold a pregnancy for more than a few weeks.

God gives us special graces to deal with our individual circumstances and will never allow us to go through more than we can handle at one time, even if it seems we are 10 inches over our head at the time. That is a grace for our life and our trial though and does not mean we can know what the person next to us is feeling, experiences such as these even effect spouses in profoundly different ways. If you find yourself giving condolences to someone who has just lost a pregnancy a shoulder to cry on is the best first offer, let them talk about their grief, and if they are open to it you can use your experience to help them to work through their grief.

My own response to pregnancy loss veries at this time. I will often gauge it on how well I know the person. Most people who know me know my story so I do not even have to tell them my experience. I do offer condolences, a shoulder to cry on (or a in-box to vent to). I also offer ideas to memorialize the pregnancy and/or books to read that can be helpful. From there I allow the other person to take the lead.

Passport Pictures

We got them done yesterday. My husband made the appointment. He tries. The thing is that he made it on a Thursday at 2:30. Nap times in our house are 10 and 2, I think he knows this but being Dad it doesn't occur to him not to make appointments at these times. Thursdays at 2 are even worse because most times there is no morring nap due to play group and shopping. If there is one it's not a good one.
We went to the picture place early to see if they could get us in. I was afraid that we would have no luck. They got us in but all Olivia wanted to do was play. Sitting still on a pillow for a head shot was not happening. Her picture looks like someone pinched her :(. Mine turned out good on the other hand.
This morning we got the passport paperwork turned in. One more step down.

We are going to take Olivia to get pictures taken with Santa today after Justin gets off work. She met him a few weeks ago and in general does well with other people so we should get a good shot for this photo. In the mean time here is a picture that Devan took last time we were home,
Yep she is standing! She is trying to do it on her own now too. Only a few more weeks until she walks. I caught her the other day trying to climb the gate in front of the Christmas tree, I'm always on my toes.

The Long Absence

Almost two months since my last post, wow I didn't realize it had been THAT long. I have done a couple of projects in the last few months but do not have pictures to show, I have been spending much of my time playing with my baby girl who is discovering new things everyday and attempting to get my house in order to sell and move. Last Saturday we got one step closer to getting our move done and got our house on the market. Now we are just waiting for a buyer, hopefully we get one before mid April, we should since we are in a good location and are not looking to make a ton of money.









Last night I made a wonderful dinner and wanted to share with everyone. We had Chicken Tikka Masala, Lentil and Rice Pilaf, Naan Bread, and Poached Pears. I took some pictures and will include those. This meal is a lot of work so make it when you have an afternoon to prepare it. Also many times I will make a very large batch of the chicken so that we can have this several times with out having to block out a day to cook. I will give directions for each dish one at a time but all of these dishes are cooking at the same time at one point or another in order to get them out on the table at the same temperature.


First the chicken. My recipe is based on this one from allrecipies.com. I took out the jalapeno pepper and cut back on the cayenne because other wise it is a very hot dish, we are talking take a bite and call the fire department. But if you can handle spice go ahead and try it with the extra pepper.

Cut three chicken breast into bite size pieces.









In a bowl combine:

1 cup plain yogurt
1 tablespoon lemon juice (I juice one half of a lemon)
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
dash of cayenne pepper (for us a little goes a long way)
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
1 tablespoon salt










Stir the chicken into this mixture and allow to marinate for at least one hour in the refrigerator.


Heat a skillet (I use cast Iron as I find it gets the best heat) and lightly oil. drain off extra marinade, place chicken in skillet, cook until liquid has cooked off. Set Cooked chicken aside.






In a large skillet melt 1 tablespoon of butter over medium heat. Saute 1 clove of garlic for one minute. Season with 2 teaspoons each cumin and paprika, and 1 tablespoon salt. Stir in 8 oz of tomato sauce and 1 cup whipping cream. Simmer on low heat until sauce thickens, about 20 minutes. Add cooked chicken and simmer for 10 minutes more.

For the rice:

My recipe for this comes from the Joy of Cooking cook book. My Grandmother bought me this cookbook the first Christmas after I was married simply because it has instructions on how to boil eggs in it and I had called my Mom asking her how to do this (something I had done many times as a teenager) because it had totally escaped my mind. My Mom spent more time laughing on the other end of the phone then it took to tell me how to do it. I don't call home and ask how to do things often any more.

Anyway the recipe is for Lentil and Rice Pilaf with Toasted Cumin Seeds. I cannot find cumin seeds where I'm at so I use cumin powder instead and it still taste great.

Stir into a medium saucepan of boiling water

1/2 cup lentils, picked over and rinsed.

Boil, uncovered, for 10 minutes; drain. Heat in an large saucepan or deep skillet over low heat:

2 table spoons vegetable oil (I use olive oil)

Add and cook just until sizzling, about 1 minute:

1 clove garlic, Finlay chopped

1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds

Add the lentils along with:

1 cup white basmati rice

Stir to combine. Add:

2 cups chicken stock

1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon salt

Bring to a boil stir once, cover and cook over medium-low heat until the stock is absorbed and the rice and lentils are tender, about 15 minutes. Uncover and let stand for 5 minutes.

This is served with Naan bread. Sometimes I make it but most times I pick it up at the grocery store. When you are just about ready to serve your meal put a couple pieces in a 400 degree oven for 4-5 minutes to warm.

We had a friend over last night whose family is of Pakistani decent. She asked us how we eat this. Justin will typically put a bed of rice down then put the chicken over it and eat it with a fork tearing off bits of bread as he needs it. I attempt to use my bread as a utensil as I know that that is the traditional way of eating it. Also I find even with cutting out a lot of the pepper it's still a spicy dish for me so the bread and a little rice in every bite tones in down a bit. Our friend said she was raised to use the bread for the meat dish but that she uses a fork for her rice. Traditionally the rice would be eaten with the hand also.

For desert I made poached pears for the May 2007 Real Simple. Go to the sight for the recipe. They were good but I forgot to take pictures and it looks much better on the sight than I would have taken.

New Coat

After about four conversations with my husband about the need for me to get a new coat that went some thing like this:

Me: I NEED to buy a winter coat.

DH: You have a coat, there is a whole closet full of coats in the extra bedroom.

Me: No I don't have a coat (we both walk into the bedroom to look at the coats in the closet which consist of two coats for Olivia, a Green Bay Packers coat of DH's, a leather jacket of DH's, a black parka of DH's, a poncho of DH's, DH's Letterman jacket from high school, a rain coat that belongs to me, a warm coat that belongs to me but is not for wearing to nice places, my FFA jacket from high school, and my winter coat that I bought last year which is a maternity)

DH: (pulling out maternity coat) see you have this one.

Me: It's a M-a-t-e-r-n-i-t-y coat. It will be way to big for me this year (I hope).

I got a new coat this weekend. And not a day too soon with the weather getting cool here, I will be wearing it soon. I got a great deal on it too. The in store price was $185, they were having a 50% off sale bringing it down to $92.50. I had $31 on a gift card so after taxes I paid $68 a 64% savings!

(picture from macys.com)

It's been awhile

Wow! The last month has just flown. We have been very busy gearing up for our move and now I think we will be breathing a little easier for a few months.



We have a couple of very small projects to do and the house will be put up for sale, hopefully by the first of December.



I spent three weeks and three visits to vets trying to get our pets started on the import process into the UK. It's a complicated six month process that has to be done right or the go into a six month quarantine when we get there. We wound up driving two hours to Fort Leavenworth Kansas and the Army vet up there because the military vets are the only ones that have micro-chip readers that read European chips which two of our animals have. The processes is started now and they should be able to enter the country about the same time we fly over there. They may have a week or so of quarantine to Finnish up there but we will also have to find a house so that works for us.



In the mean time, I'm doing little bits of packing here and there in hopes that we sell our house right away and will move into a temp house. I have also gotten a creative streak, the stress has settled a bit. I cut 10 baby jumpers the other day, I'm going to give five of them away and keep the other five for our baby clothes stash. I also bought 20 some yards of fabric at Wal-Mart off the $1 rack. most of it will be pajama pants and dresses for Olivia. Some will be a shirt I have wanted to make for myself for a while and then I will have some for my fabric stash that I have a goal of building along with my pattern stash. Pictures will be coming soon.

Whats been going on here

I eluded to some big news last week in my post, and while things are not set in stone yet I think now is the time to lay it all out.

My business is going to be on the very back burner for an indefinite period of time. The reason being that I need to focus on getting our home ready to put up for sale and then packing and moving. Yes we will be moving in the very near future, within the next six months.

Being a military family we have become accustom to this and welcome the change. We have been in the house we currently call home for just over three years now. That is about six months longer than we have lived in any house in the eight years we have been married. This move is not yet set in stone, nothing is with the military until you are at your destination really but we feel that this is God timing. My husband filed for an extension so that we could have more time to sell our house and we are waiting to see if they approve it or cancel the orders all together. So where are you moving to? you ask, Well we are going to be moving back to England. We are so excited about this. We loved our time in England and there were many things we did not get to do before we left.

I ask for prayers for us. While we are ready for the transition and even anticipate it they are always difficult. In particular we need to get our house sold and in a timely manner at a decent selling price. If it sells quickly we have a couple of options, one being to rent a place until we move. This is not always easy as landlords around here like to have leases for one year though our orders would get us out of a lease we would hate to do that to a landlord. In addition many times the rent is more than what we are paid for housing cost, one of the reasons we bought in the first place, so it would cost us a lot of money to rent a house even for a few months especially with animals. Another less desirable option is for myself, the baby, and our pets to move home with my parents and for my husband to stay with some friends who have already said it would not be a problem, and then putting all of our belongings into storage until we move (or with any luck having orders cut and getting our goods shipped ahead of us). This would save us a lot of money even with helping people with utilities and food but our family would be separated by 5 hours for a few months and I would have little access to a vehicle to come visit. We are prepared for either situation.

I am in the process of attempting to do a fairly complete inventory of our house. Especially the items that will be going into long term storage. This is a daunting tasks to say the least but in the end will make the move that much smoother. I am also evaluating much of what we have and making very tough decisions about weather it is an item that we can live without for the next few years or not. Some things are a given, but somethings you just can't be sure about and since I know that we have almost no choice but to down size this move and will want to buy some more antiques while we are there I just have to make the choices.

Well the baby is awake and I'm off to do some more work.

I had to enter this one.....

There are a ton of contest out there in blog land but this is one of the few that I actually take the time to enter. 5 Minutes for Mom is giving away a pink Dyson vacuum!!!!!!!!!!

When we were stationed at RAF Alconbury in England I had a friend who just raved about Dysons but would not pay 240 GBP for it just to move back to the states in a few years. I had not heard much about them, dh and I were relatively isolated from the British culture we lived on base and did not have British television. Well then I began to see ads for them on TV at friends houses and wanted one myself. Fast forward to moving back stateside. Y'all have no idea how much things change in three years unless you are not around fro those three years. Among those changes were Dyson vacuums in the states. I don't have one yet, right now we don't need one since our floors are mostly hard, but it would be awesome to win one.

Head on over to enter for yourself. DH uses one at work and says its the best vacuum ever.

All creative efforts on hold....

Well maybe not totally but I have some things going on right now that demand immediate attention so I will have no time to do any sewing for at least two weeks.

We have news here but I'm holding off on telling. Some may already know but there are some people you have to tell face to face before blogging about it. Hopefully we will have final details in the next week and be able to let everyone know what is going on. Anyway because of this my free time is occupied with preparations.

I really do need to find some time to make Olivia some dresses though. I got out her 6-9 mo clothes and she only has one dress in the whole lot, if you don't count the Christmas dresses she has. There is a lot of girly stuff but I like to put her in dresses for church so I will have to carve some time somewhere for that. Hopefully things will settle a bit in the next couple of weeks. This is my life. Get used to one normal and another comes up.

Feeling Renewed

I don't know what it was about this weekend but somehow I just feel a sense of renewal and re freshness. I *know* that everything is going to be OK and have a better clearer plan of action.

I sat down and worked on my Home Organization Journal this weekend. I have had them in the past and they have worked but never quite gotten past the basic daily chores and a weekly deep clean. For one reason or another I have not been able to find a way to get the more irregular task done. This weekend I devised a plan that I think will work for me. When I get things put together I will do a post about it.

I have not done any sewing in the last couple of weeks, mainly because I have decided that I need to get my home in order. So this month is organize the house and set good habits month. in October I hope to start making Christmas presents for our Friends and family.

I am also going to add a volunteer endeavor to my agenda and saw a need for people to help at the Airman's Attic on base so when I am doing my running tomorrow I will go by the Airman and Family Readiness Center and see what I need to do to help with that.

Now to work on my Homemakers Journal. I hope to share it soon.

Enjoying another little break

Labor day weekend and the hubby has a four day weekend. He had to do some running yesterday and we went to Lowe's to look at some materials to put together a proper pantry in a little nook in our house that will work perfectly for that purpose, only to realise that if we bought the materials at that time we would have no way to get them to the house. We are still adjusting to having a baby seat in the back of our car. Pre-baby we would just put the back seats down and load the car up, we have hauled allot-including 42" doors in the trunk of our car. Could be one of the reasons we had to replace the strut mounts on it this summer....

Anyway since I got Olivia and I back into our routine this week and was able to keep up on my task, I was able to do some deep cleaning while DH went and got the materials and painted them up. Tomorrow I will have the shelves installed and have room to store my extra food and supplies!!!!