Saving the Snowman

As sometimes happens with active kiddos of a certain age, things occasionally break. Such was the case for this poor fellow, who had been with us for the past 9 Christmases. I got him for Kevin the first year we were married and after the little snowman's twin sister sadly passed on to a similar, yet more horrifying incident last year, we were so sad to hear of his accident.


Thanks to a certain-someone-who-won't-be-named, our little winter wonder broke his adorable little head right in the back. Poor fella.

I simply could not bear the idea of throwing him out. He gave me "the look." Yep... this one.


I swear it said, it its most snuggly snowman way, "But... I love you. I just want to be a snowman forever and ever, and can't really do that so very much from the garbage can. Please?"

How could I resist that? I mean really.

So, I pulled out some of my handspun merino and got to work. Within an hour or so, I had him all patched up (or at least covered up).


The back even has a little tassel. Every snowman needs a tassel.


One snowman saved! All in a day's work as a mama.

FAQ

Hello all! Well as you can see, the blog has gotten another makeover. Links will be put on the sidebar soon, so please let me know if you want to be added!

I am wanting to do a type of FAQ (which will be linked above when it is completed). If you have a moment, please leave a comment and just let me know anything you'd like to know about me or RTH. :) I'll be happy to answer!

In the mean time I'll leave you with a photo of some yarny goodness. This is some of my Bamboo and Finn handspun plied together. I'm hoping to make enough for a shawl. The Finn is from my friend Alice's farm! Its so pretty and squishy!

Bits of me.

First things first... Alexis, you are the winner of the painting! I'm sorry about the delayed drawing... but congratulations on the win! I have your address and will get it mailed to you shortly. :)

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A lot has been happening here, and some of that has kept me from posting. It is hard for me to know what I should or shouldn't post sometimes because I'm not sure what you all are looking for when you come to the blog. I don't know how much of the nitty-gritty you all really want to know about me. I would really appreciate it if you would leave a comment and just let me know if you're just visiting for homemaking-related-stuffs or if you are interested in hearing more about the life and times of moi. ;) There is no wrong answer.

So... I'm going to pretend that you want to hear all about my personal life, and give you updates. If you're here just for home-related stuffs, well... hopefully you can glean some goodies out anyway. Here goes.

THE GOOD:

* Anna turned 4 last weekend. I can't believe how quickly she is growing up. She's my youngest little girl and I couldn't be more proud of her and more enamored. She keeps me laughing and keeps my heart young.


* I made new friends from the San Antonio Fiber Arts group at the last knit night, and am so very happy about that. Everyone from the whole group was amazing, and it was so exciting to get to put some faces to the names that I know so well on Ravelry. Lisa and Mariah were both incredibly welcoming to me and have reached out in friendship, which has been wonderful. We all have so many things in common and the friendship is fun and easy. :) They also prepared the amazing birthday feast for Anna that you see in the picture above. Lisa made puppy chow and put it in cupcake holders and put a candle in Anna's. She was overjoyed, and we all had such a great time!

* I updated my stash on Ravelry and whoooo boy do I have a bunch of goodies in my stash. I honestly had no idea what I had on hand, because it had been forever since I had really looked at it all. To give you an idea of how unorganized it had been, I went up to go catalogue it and *found* a 12 lb Romney fleece I didn't know I had. Twelve. Pounds. Yikes. One of my goals for 2010 is going to be to work through all of my fleece and undyed fiber, getting it ready to spin, so that I can just reach in the stash and grab something pretty to work with. I also vow to update my ravelry stash page regularly with new items, so that I can keep better track of them. Whew.

(some of my hand-carded/dyed/spun alpaca)


THE BAD:

* Mom and brother couldn't make it to Thanksgiving. We were so looking forward to them coming and miss them both terribly. I know life circumstances come up, but it was still really hard to have the holiday without them.


* Abbi had to give back her communication device. This has been really really hard, especially for Abbi. She gained dozens of new words both on the device and verbally (after learning them on the device). This jump in language was SO huge, coming from a beautiful little girl who only had a 30 word vocabulary before, at the age of 8. We're hoping to have a loaner to last us until we can order one with the help of the STAP program very soon. Any good thoughts to this end will be much appreciated!



* Our FRG program in the unit has been dismantled and is no more. I understand the reasonings for it, but its still something sad for me and something I have had to take some time to work through emotionally, especially after investing so much time and work into it as the Special Events Chairperson. It is hard being a military family to begin with, but being a military family with special needs requires extra support. Every family in our unit has special needs of some type, so it was very much needed. Change can also be hard when so much else is on everyone's plates. All this together was just a lot to swallow, and while I am supportive of the positive changes that are going on to try to help the unit improve, I am saddened that the FRG is no more.

THE UGLY:

* Abbi hurt her foot really badly on the elliptical machine. She hurt it so badly that we thought it was broken, and had to go get a lot of X-rays and exams done. Thankfully everything is in place, just badly injured. She was hurt so badly that she was unable to go to school because she couldn't wear shoes and it was considered a liability problem. Its been two weeks and the bruise, which stretches from her achiles heel all the way to her toes, is just now starting to fade.

* Our puppy, Sissy, passed away of distemper a week ago. I can't even tell you how sad I am about this. Its been a long time since I cried so hard. She was only 4 months old. We are all heartbroken and miss her so so much.


So... As you can see, a lot has been happening that has basically made it hard for me to do many home-focused things that I felt were worth sharing with you all. I do have a recipe or two coming up that I'd love to share with you for your holiday meals this December.

What more would you like to find here at the blog? What sorts of things do you like to hear about? Crafts? Recipes? Me/the-kids/etc? Thank you in advance for the feedback. Hopefully this will help me to blog more regularly. Hugs to all!

Part 2 Interview and Giveaway. :)

Hi everyone! Thank you to anyone who checked out Part 1 of the Interview over at Ruby Magazine!

I will be having a celebratory giveaway for all of my wonderful RTH'ers. :)

It is just a simple watercolor sketch I did that I thought was applicable to the theme of home and what it means for each of us to make them into places we love to be. It is simple, but so are many of the traditions of homemaking, and it comes from my heart to yours.


In order to win the prize, simply leave a comment on this post with some feedback for me, or Karen.

If you would like to multiply your chances to win, then blog, facebook, or tweet about it and then come back here to let us know in another comment (one comment per thing you do - so don't post "I facebooked and tweeted and blogged!" That will only count as one entry! One new comment for each time you share about it!). You can gain another entry into the contest by heading over to Ruby and saying hello on the Interview #2 post (though you will need to come back here and tell us in the comments so that we can give you another entry). That is a total of 5 possible chances to win this amazing giveaway.

The giveaway will end Sunday November 15th at midnight CST, and at that time I will do a random number drawing and announce the winner.

Ramen Our Way

I present to you the staple of college students and frugal folks everywhere... Ramen Noodles.


We have been trying to find ways to make Ramen a bit tastier and add some more veggies into the mix, so this is what our Ramen noodles look like when we make them:


What you see there is a bowl of Beef Ramen topped with a diced tomato, a diced green onion, a handful of cilantro and a sprinkling of colby-jack cheese. I usually share a bowl with Anna, and it fills us both up and tastes delicious.

How do you make your Ramen?

RTH Featured at Ruby Magazine

Hello All! Thought I would let you know that the interview I did with Karen over at Ruby Magazine came out today! There are lots of pictures, and interesting information about Reclaiming the Home, and about me too. I hope all of you will go take a peek!



A big thank you to Karen for being such a sweetheart and for investing so much time and energy in to Reclaiming The Home. Ruby is such a beautiful and inspiring magazine! :) I hope you all have a chance to look at everything she has to offer there. You will be glad you went! :)

Party Time

Well, the Halloween Party was a smash. Thought I would share a few of my favorite bits and pieces!

This is just a simple basket filled with fake spider webs and Werther's Originals.


Hard to see it, but these are gloves (with bones printed on them) filled with popcorn, and candy for nails.


Here is our watermelon carved to look like brains. There were two of them, though this picture only shows one. The hand in the picture would move, and crawl toward people. Let me tell you, the brains were so gross looking when people carved into them! Sure did taste good, though!


This is just very simple, but I love how a basic orange tub can make bags of chips look all Halloweenie!


These adorable chocolate-covered pretzels were snatched up fast. The white chocolate was dyed with food coloring, and Halloween-themed sprinkles were shaken on while the chocolate was still wet.


These smores were a HUGE hit. Everyone loved them, and many people said they'd never had smores before! Of course these aren't your traditional smores, but it was a good gateway into the wonders of marshmallows, chocolate and graham crackers. YUM.


Loved this super-cute display of "dirt" cakes. They were basic chocolate cake, topped with chocolate icing and dusted with crushed oreos, with a gummy worm on top.


Of course, it wouldn't be Halloween without caramel apples! Some of them have Halloween sprinkles on them as well.


There were lots of other yummy foods too from potato salad to "bat wings" (chicken wings drenched in a dark bbq sauce) and mummy dogs (hot dogs wrapped in croissants to look like mummies). There was green punch with red hand-shaped ice. Everything was so delicious!

We had all kinds of carnival games from bean bag toss games to fish-for-your prize games. There were potato sack races, a moon bounce, a cake walk, and more. My personal favorite was bobbing for doughnuts. All the kids had to try to eat their doughnut off of the string without using their hands, or letting it fall. We had a few that were masters at it easily, and others who eventually gave up and just grabbed it to dig in.

Here's a picture of our "snow princess," Anna, bobbing for doughnuts!



Abbi looked beautiful as a witch-without-her-hat. :)