Thursday, January 29, 2009

Birthday Girl!!!


Today my Princess B turned 6!!
(Six?? How can she be six already??)

Here she is going off to school

They happened to have a Winter Carnival that day at school--games, hot chocolate, a movie, a 9 foot sub and fun fun fun!

We had the family (minus hubby's Dad, who is still in Thailand) here for the weekend.
Princess B is all about horses lately (she asks me at least once per week if we can move to a horse farm)--so she had a horse cake:


(Please excuse the wonkiness of the cake--the icing was sketchy and kept running off the cake which made the ears not stick etc etc, plus now that I look at it, the nose looks weird--anyways--it was good)

My sister went to town with Strawberry Shortcake goodies (2 bags full!!)


(Here is Princess B wearing her apron and headband and serving tea)

We had a blast--and the best/biggest gift--Ballet lessons from Grandma and Grandpa Bull and a Ballet outfit (A real leotard (seen above) and tights and shoes!)

She actually started Ballet last night (She took Ballet 2 years ago at the same place with the same teacher and actually remembered some of it)

One of her little friends from her former school is in the class--which makes if fun!



You've come a long way baby!!



















Tuesday, January 20, 2009

I won!!!

I won I won I won a contest.

Chris from Stumbling over Chaos usually has a lot of links to bloggers that are having contests and/or giveaways.
I have won some things before because of her awesome linkage.

This, by far, is the best one!

There is a music blogger in Toronto who was giving away 2 mp3 players--one to an American who entered his contest and another for Canadians.
I won!


I won an 8gb mp3 player with video playback!!
I'm so excited. He e-mailed me this morning and is going to put it in the mail as soon as he can find a box.

Yeah!

Thank you Chris, thank you chromewaves, thank you Phillips.

Favourite things

Not all of my favourite things..but some of the ones from Christmas.

My BIL lives in Toronto now and knew that I, um, "like" yarn--so he googled yarn shops, walked to Lettuce Knit of all places and found this:


He told the shop girl that I liked knitting, that I dye and spin my own stuff--she suggested the bowl and I love it.
(He also had thoughts to give me my own dot.com shop--but that might be for another day)


My Dad and step-Mom know that I am obsessed with socks and they bought me these beauties:

complete with reinforced nylon thread in matching pattern--cute!!

They also bought me a book that I asked for:


Love the Harlot.


My sister--knowing that I love orange, that I love hats and that I love Serenity and Firefly--made a Jayne hat for hubby.
Hubby having no idea what/who Jayne is could not figure out why I was so excited.
I was more excited when I opened my gift and found a matching hat!

We are too cool, no??

Funny thing: I made A an R2D2 hat for Christmas--but he won't put it on ("I no wear that Mommy")--but do you think you could get the Jayne hat away from him???

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Warning, long post...with pictures


I really need to come up with a new theme besides the "I was away again and did you notice".
But that's how it has been lately. I have been at home 3 days between December 18th and January 06th. It has been busy.

My Grandfather died on Boxing Day and my sister and I booked flights to go to Vancouver for the funeral. We had to travel from my Dads to my house for an overnight (to get my passport) then to her house then flying out New Years Day (surprisingly easy for what I thought was going to be a busy day).

It snowed at my sister--we were going to shovel--but it was really deep:

That's from just overnight--it's up to my knees.
So my sisters amazing neighbour came over and used his snow blower to clear the driveway. He looked like a J Crew model (no hat, not a hair out of place, just effortlessly clearing the driveway)--so Kinneared him:



I brought a sock and a hat to finish and a sweater to start. Not much was accomplished as Murphy's Law of knitting was with me and I had glitchy-glitches all over.

We no sooner sat in the Syracuse airport and I picked up my knitting then my needle broke. (please ignore my hair--it has a mind of it's own)


I wound yarn on the plane to start the February Lady sweater and after a couple of false starts, got to row 5 where I realized that the pattern was not going to tell me how to do the button hole, but rather link to a website to show me. (Note to self: when starting a new project away from home be sure to actually read through the pattern first). Sigh


The committal and funeral was easier than I thought it would be--He lived a long and happy
life-and although we are saddened to see him go, I know that he's re-united with my Mom and Aunts and his first wife, and that makes me smile.

We had a good time with family--talking, eating, drinking endless pots of tea, eating some more--seeing my cousins' adorable baby and then more eating.

(He's eating the tap while having his bath)

There was knitting--my sister finished a sock,

my cousin had knit a scarf for his new girlfriend (and was subjected to endless adoration/teasing from us), another cousin has knit 10 hats for her brothers this season--and she might have the sock bug!.

We walked, we talked, we found a yarn store--I may have bought some flat feet (wheeee!)

We got snowed on, rained on and had fun navigating streets that don't' get plowed

(Vancouver area has way way more snow than we do--it never stopped the whole time we were there).

We reminisced, told stories and learned a lot about our family.

Over all, I'm so thankful that my sister and I were able to go. We spent some quality time together (It's not the Loopy Ewe Spring Fling, but it was good).

We knit in airports,


We danced in airports,


kinneared some annoying people
("Like OMG YOU went skydiving too?? Yeah, right...a ha ha, right!" FOR SURE!--for 2 hours")


met some nice United Airlines workers (upgrades and free checked bags)...saw some interesting people...some cute babies and played airport games.


(oh and took pictures of our names on the screen--I know, i know--I got camera happy--we'd bee )

On the knitting front-- I did get some access to the internet and figured out the button hole, and have accomplished some of the sweater.

I think it's going to be a good sweater. I've realized that I should probably never knit a pullover again--since I get cold/hot/cold/hot all within the span of 10 minutes.
Cardigans it is.

I did almost finish hubby's Morning Coffee Toque. I was spinning/knitting it on the sly since it was a surprise Christmas gift. For some reason it's looking quite large even though the spinning was as close as I could get it and the pattern/needles were the same.
I think it will work out.

While I was gone, Hubby and my MIL did some major cleaning up/organizing and hubby did a closet reno I am very thankful for.
He made my closet wider (sounds easy--but had to cut a beam in the wall of our old house and join it to another beam and drywall and fix all the antique trim)--then he installed a new closet shelving/organizational unit which I'm in love with.
Best of all, my bedroom is clean clean clean, there is no laundry mountain for me to climb, there is no laundry anywhere in the house to do...
My Christmas tree and all decorations are away...

THANK YOU!

on the down-side, the kids have been really sick all week. Princess B has a very sore throat that might be strep--not sure but she has some drugs now.


A has major congestion to the point that he can hardly breathe or keep his eyes open--this was him all week:

(he's so sick, but he's posing--this is his "I pretty sick Mommy" face)

I need to get into the habit of regularly posting, and regularly showing pictures of what I am up to.
I have some test knitting to do that I can't show full pictures of--but I'm sure some stealth up close of the colour shots, would be okay.

Stay tuned.