Food and Planning

In order to maintain some sort of restraint when it comes to excessive grocery shopping, I have been doing pretty good with planning out our meals.  As a family, we use Google Calendar to keep track of what we have going on.  This way, we can make plans without checking in with each other and make plans for each other when necessary also.  

I keep other items on the calendar such as when to give the dogs their heart worm pills and most recently a weekly menu.  

Prior to grocery shopping, I plan out all my recipes for the week, plug each one into a day and off we go.  It has worked out pretty well so far.  I either Google search for recipes that contain certain ingredients and try those or I browse Pinterest to see what inspires me.  There are also some cute ideas for menu boards that you can hang in your kitchen but with limited space in this house, I’m going to keep it to the on line calendar for now.

I read an interesting post about making freezer meals which will be helpful when I’m out on leave with the baby and when I’m back to work and our schedule is more hectic.  I need to get started on trying some of those.

A cabled hat to match!

Just finished the Otis Baby Hat.  It is sized just right for a newborn and has three cable sections around the hat.  It goes just perfectly with the sweater from my last post!  This may be a coming home outfit contender!

A Spring Sweater for an April Baby

Slowly but surely I seem to be getting knitting motivation back.  Knitting baby stuff helps as it’s almost always quick and more of an instant gratification type of project.  This short sleeved sweater knit in cotton should be perfect for an April newborn.

Puerperium Cardigan
Short sleeve version- ended up with six button holes
Knit on size 6 Addi Clicks
Knit with Jo Sharp Soho Summer DK Cotton

Bring on 2012

Every year one of my favorite posts is to reflect on and post some resolutions.  I love a fresh start and the chance to sort of start over.

This past year was amazing.  I married the man of my dreams (and still can’t believe how lucky I am) and found out we are expecting our first baby.  Although I did not accomplish most of last year’s resolutions (except for having an awesome wedding/honeymoon and losing some weight…) I’m pretty much at peace with it and as with every year, ready to have at it again!

2011 was a great year!  Some high points…

Bachelorette Party May, 2011

Our Wedding Day – May 21, 2011

Honeymoon in Ireland – May/June 2011

In August 2011, we found out we are going to have a baby!

October 2011 – Fun at Rhinebeck

And, Christmas 2011

It was truly an amazing year.  We accomplished a lot too.  We put on a new roof, gutted our basement, bought Pete his truck and a couple rooms of furniture.  We have plenty more to do in 2012 too starting with a nursery.

So that brings me along to my New Year’s resolutions for 2012.

This year, we will become first time parents.  I think that itself is a resolution.

So here it is, my lofty goals for 2012:

1.  Be Healthy – Continue to have a healthy pregnancy and hopefully a healthy baby and get into shape after as quickly as possible.

2.  Continue my mission to reduce debt.

3.  Retain my sanity and hopefully still get some knitting time in!

Happy New Year and best wishes for an AWESOME 2012!

Six Months Down, Three To Go!

Had a great Christmas with our families.  I am now officially six months pregnant!  I guess crazier things have happened but wow.  Seems nuts sometimes!

Still a lot of work to be done to prepare a nursery and clear out my “craft room”.  I think one more weekend and we’ll be ready for cleaning, painting, etc.  That will be a good feeling.

Hope everyone had a great weekend and Happy Holidays with their families!

Christmas 2011

Why I MUST have an iPad.

I like technology as much as the next girl and have found that with Ravelry and more on line activity, I refer to my actual knitting books way less often for patterns.  However, I don’t necessarily like to print off a bunch of pdf’s just to knit something up and possibly throw the print out away OR print out a bunch that I like, lose them somewhere in my house, then print them again.  Well my friends, although I don’t read much, I just acquired my husband’s old Nook.  This is great because I can put my knitting pdfs on it….not great though because if it’s a chart, there is no color on this Nook so I can’t see those types of marks/symbols.  I also cannot mark where I am on a chart within a page – but I’m excited to use it for the patterns that it will work for which will still be plenty.

Cut to today.  JUST NOW in fact.  I came upon the Yarn Harlot’s blog.  I used to read it all the time but haven’t for a while now.  Well, she’s doing a super cool thing where she’s telling non knitters what to get for knitters for gifts.  BRILLIANT.  She’s really helping a lot of people out here.

That brings me to her post from yesterday that you can find right here.  This post is why I now want an iPad like I can’t even tell you.  I will get one someday just so that I can use it for knitting patterns – as soon as I can justify the cost.

We’ve been busy!

I’ve actually been knitting believe it or not, but just haven’t had the time or energy to post very much.  The reason?  This little thing sucking the energy right out of me:

We are due in April and are quite excited!  I’ve already done a little bit of knitting and have much more planned!  I also have some nursery designs/plans in the works that I’m super excited about as well.

So far, I made a mobile:

I also made a sweater and hat set that we might even use for a “coming home” outfit:

The only flaw here is that the hat looks a bit huge…I have no idea how big their heads are supposed to be so I might make another smaller version of the hat too.  P gave me the cupcake buttons last year as part of my Christmas stocking.  I think it came out nice.

We don’t plan to find out the sex of the baby so we are keeping it neutral and excited to see what the little one is in April!

Hopefully my energy will return soon and I’ll have more knitting to post!

Rhinebeck!

Last weekend, a group of us piled into a big comfy car and went off to the NY Sheep and Wool Festival.

It was a great day despite a few brief bouts of rain, and a good time was had by all!  It was very crowded (which I totally expected) but I was still able to score some great deals!

Got a little bit of fiber, got home and promptly spun it up.  In doing so, I further solidified my decision to sell my wheel as it just was not what I wanted to be doing.  The fiber was pretty though!

I then got some beautiful bulky yarn…

And I plan to use it to make this.

To match it, I got this pretty sparkly fingering weight yarn:

And I plan to make these gloves.

Last, I got myself a little cashmere lace:

And with this lovely yarn, I plan to make this.

Surprisingly, this is all stuff for ME!!!  I tend to buy yarn to make gifts for others but I guess I’m on a selfish knitting streak but that’s ok.  I think I deserve it!  ;)

Walk to end Alzheimer’s

Hi Everyone,

On Sunday, September 25, 2011 I will be participating in the Walk to End Alzheimer’s.  If you are willing and/or able to donate, it would be greatly appreciated!