Finished

I've been finishing up some projects around here and I thought I'd share a few with you. Ahhhh.... doesn't it feel great to finish things? As a chronic non-finisher, it sure does do my heart well.

First, the biggest undertaking - and the reason I have never shown you a picture of it before - our basement. Our basement is partially finished with one room walled off. When we moved in I think we were tired of moving 6 times in 7 years - so we just started loading stuff into that basement room. Aside from sort of cleaning it out a couple years ago - all that stuff was pretty much forgotten. Our new birth mother is coming to stay with us for a few days this month so I thought I'd better fix up a room for her. I hemmed a couple curtains we had hanging around, put them up and sewed small curtains out of the remnants. We moved the bed, sold the full mattress we had down there and another twin frame and here is the result:


The other thing we moved from down there was the matching twin frame and mattress for the kids room. Why you ask? Well, because it happens to make into......

THIS!!!
Do you even know how stoked I am about this?!?!
I was moving furniture around the other day and realized that the tops of the headboard posts came off of the bed. A quick call to my grandma and it turns out these make into bunk beds! How cool is that?! They're very sturdy but I have a feeling some parts are missing since the top bunk is pretty low to the bottom and there is obviously no ladder or railings. So we're going to buy or make what we need and may try to add a piece to lift up the top a bit.
SO. EXCITED.
And I'm going to paint it - red, I think. Or maybe green. Or red....

It's been babies galore among our neighbors, friends and family. I've finished up four of these baby hats. A friend of my grandma's made one each for Steele and Adia when they were born and they are the best newborn hats ever. Love the yarn. I have a couple more to make.


I made this hat from the alpaca yarn I bought out at Semiahmoo. I somehow forgot that I look terrible in cream. I quickly remembered once I finished it and put it on my head. So it's going to Amy.



I made this cute washcloth from Weekend Knitting which I checked out from the library. It has a lot of cute patterns in it so I added it to my Amazon wish list. I still have to weave in the ends.


I have a church baby shower to go to on Monday night for two babies that were born in January. The hat is going to one of them, this blanket is going to the other. I've made quite a few of these little yard square swaddling blankets. I use two pieces of flannel - they turn out thick and cozy and perfect for..... well, swaddling. But this one - this one was frustrating me to no end. The dotted chenille I used for the back was more like a knit. It kept stretching and bunching and I couldn't get the darn thing square. I had to rip out 3 seams. I hate ripping out seams. I finally got it finished. Not without quite a number of flaws though.


I've also been trying to knit cables for the first time - thanks to Michelle's encouragement (check Michelle out as one of my frequent commenters). For the first time ever I checked the gauge on this. It turned out way too big. It was going to be this set of fingerless gloves. The pattern was also way wonky and it took me a while to figure out. Oh well, I think I want to use a different yarn anyway. Now to figure out something to do with this beautiful teal tweedy yarn. I love it.



Craiglist Update: $304 since Thursday. Yahooooo!!!!


You guys are totally cool for reading as I drone on and on about my projects and post bazillions of pictures of my kids. Thanks. I'm also realizing, as I post more and more pictures, that I really need to invest in a photography class. I mean, I could be taking awesome photos like this cool mama.

Did I tell you I went off coffee? Justin says that with all the energy I've had I'm never getting coffee again. Kind of ironic, huh?

Backing Up

January-ish in Pictures

Milkface DeeDee

A Snowy Nighttime Walk
A Snowy Winter Morn

Another Day On the Hill
(Day 2 for Adia)

My handsome boy.

Adia's Favorite Birthday Present

Some Good Pot
A visit to see

New Baby Taylor
(ok - I cannot tell a lie. This was actually in February)

A Day With Friends
gave some pre-Audra respite for this mama.

Thank you for bearing with my photo frenzy. I needed to get these pictures off my computer but wanted to be sure and document our fun highlights before they got lost in the great abyss of my external hard drive. I have one more BIG, FUN highlight - but it deserves a post of it's own.

We've been organizing and purging like crazy around here and today is no different. Justin and I have been rockin' Craiglist raising money for our upcoming adoption fees. Sold so far this week: saggy old full mattress and boxspring, changing table, 2 mannequin torsos, dryer = $135. Justin's been finding things FOR FREE and then re-selling them - we got the already-sold dryer for free, we have 2 more washing machines sitting in our garage that he got for free, he picked up a commercial sink on the side of the road that he's going to take to recycle. We have another twin bed frame and a brand new baby swing waiting in the wings to sell also. And we're having a fun time doing it.

Hope all of you out there in bloggy land are enjoying your weekends as well!

Comedy Night

Count yourselves lucky.
Tickets to see these guys live are through the roof.

Typical

When this shows up.....



So does this...



And my wardrobe will look something like this...


Today is proving to be a typical day.

Steele Says

Papa: How come you don't do the moves at library story time?

Steele: Well, um, I don't think they have very good moves.

This was so funny to us for a lot of different reasons.

1. I've always wondered why he doesn't do the moves. Now I know.

2. We are a family who does moves. Good moves. Hip shakin', booty boppin' moves. So what's up with that?

3. Now that I think about it, reason number 2 may have hit the nail on the head. Nothin' compares to the Jobes family moves.

Good Moves

Random Funny Picture

I Heart the Northwest

Saturday was such a beautiful, sunny day. While Justin was on his way home from work the kids and I planned a little family adventure. I packed a lunch and once Justin got home and settled we took off. We headed for Semiahmoo spit. In a few months, once the weather warms up, I think we'll go clam digging there. I can't wait. But for now, we opted for a walk down their beautifully paved trail and a little visit to the Marina gift shop where I bought some Alpaca yarn for this cute hat.

So here's a side story: Once, when I was 19 or 20 years old I had three jobs. Real jobs... not just like little side ones. Sometimes I would go to all three of them in one day. I had to wear uniforms for two of them. One of these three jobs was in the Marina shop at Semiahmoo. I've had A LOT of jobs in my life (a crazy amount of jobs... think 20 or 30... I can't remember even though I counted once) but my marina job sticks out as one of the most memorable. I got to fuel up boats that came into the marina, even though it was at least a half hour drive from my house it was an enjoyable one, all the marina shop guys would come in and talk to me, I met lots of interesting rich people (not that you have to be rich to be interesting) and one time a fellow employee and I even got invited out on a young rich-ee's sail boat for an evening sail. As it turns out, sail boats and I don't mix - remember the salt and vinegar chips up to the mountain? - but the idea of it was fun.

Mt. Baker
Holds a record for the most snowfall in the whole world.

Canadian Rockies

Whiterock, B.C. Canada across the water
Gotta love husbands that call your name then snap a picture
Ancient Artifacts.. heh heh
This was the best of about 10 pictures... oh well.

Inspiration, Motivation, Anticipation

Inspiration...

illustrations by Barbara Cooney

Motivation...

The last couple of mornings I have had wonderful amounts of motivation and energy to start getting some things cleaned up around here. This morning I cleaned, filed, organized and shredded to my heart's content in my office area.


Anticipation...

In anticipation and hopefulness of things to come, I cleared off half of my work table to make room for my sewing machine. I'm hoping to have some more time to use it in the near future. Also, filled with anticipation - bins of freshly organized baby girl clothes peeking from the storage closet.

Calling All Decorators

You know who you are... I won't name names unless I get desperate.

Just in case you need a reminder - here's the vintage map. On the walls in the back. Love it. Not quite certain on it for the kids room. I'm very inspired by the colors in Barbara Cooney's illustrations for the book The Little Fir Tree. In fact, it's exactly the kind of the feeling I want for the kids' bedroom in general. I've even thought about painting some of our favorite children's book quotes on the walls. Wouldn't that be fun?

So have at it! You have an entirely blank canvas to work with.

*Also, in case you're wondering. The torn shades (which badly needed replacing anyway) are the work of bored little hands that were supposed to be sleeping....

Sweet Steele

Mama: Steele, what a sweet boy you are. How'd you get to be my son?

Steele: (very matter-of-factly) Jesus brought me here.

*News Flash*

We interrupt the commencement of niceness to bring you some reality.

While Cutzi is not currently puking out all her negative thoughts onto her blog....

she has been puking out Thursday night's dinner into the toilet.

Still not feeling great.

Achy.

Headachy.

No chocolate or wine or afore-planned steak dinner for me tonight.

Maybe not loving my life quite so much today, but still lovin' it.

And the worst part of being sick? (aside from the puking...) Hearing my kids run back and forth across the house while I've quarantined myself to the basement and not being able to join them, seeing their little faces from the top of the stairs saying, "Hi Mama! Are you still sick Mama? Did you get the drinks and crackers we brought you?"

Can't wait to hug them again! My Valentine did give me a little hug today, but it kind of hurt my sickly, aching body.....

If You Can't Say Something Nice...

You know the old adage....

If you can't say something nice, don't say it at all.

If I'm honest, I've been adhering to this a little bit in my absence of posting.

But here's the other honest thing: I have a nice life. I love, well... 97% of it at this point. It's true. It's not just something I present to you here on this blog. My husband is actually wonderful and we honestly do not just "get along" but we truly love being around each other most of the time. I do actually very much enjoy my children on a day-to-day basis and have very few moments where I am frustrated as a mother - and if I do I somehow quickly forget them. I do really love spending time with my husband and children more than anything on this earth and we do get to spend a crazy-blessing of an amount of time together doing fun things which I would never in a million years trade for anything. It's all true.

I don't say this to boast - but to be honest. And sometimes? Well, sometimes when I read blogs I think it is often more glorified to talk poorly about spouses or to express the frustrations of motherhood and life. Now, I recognize that someone's reality is just that - their reality. It's what they experience, what they know - and sometimes they don't know that others might have a different reality. I get that. And I'm not saying that there's anything innately wrong with being honest - at all. I've done it here. We all have ups and downs. It's just that I sometimes feel as if expressing all the bad stuff somehow normalizes and validates it. Instead of wanting to change it - people want to hear, "It's ok to feel that way. We all feel that way. We all do those things. It's completely normal...." And then, when the good life is presented - the people who do enjoy their lives are accused of being dishonest - as if they're presenting some pseudo blog-life. I'm just sayin'..... sometimes the good stuff is really true.

With that, and back to the title of this post, I'm often tempted when I sit down to blog to puke out all my negative opinions about all the dumb stuff people around me are doing in their lives. Really dumb stuff. You know the kind - I'm sure you have it all around you too. People are crazy. I'm surrounded by them lately. To the point that I feel like I'm in a big pool of muck floating around on my nice life. Clinging to it. Trying to cling onto others - like these fun friends - who also love their life.

But remember? Remember what I told you? My new motto?

I'm rubber.

And more and more lately, I'm letting things bounce off of me. I love it. It feels good. Other people don't like it so much - sometimes they just keep pelting me and pelting me with their craziness- little do they know I'm like a full-on bouncy ball. Did I really just say that??? I'm a full-on bouncy ball??? Um... yah. This blog post has really taken a turn....

*Frantically trying to remember the point of this post*

I'm rubber, crazy people, nice life, if you can't say something nice...

Oh yah - I even bought a journal (not that I've written in it much) but I did need a place to spew everything since I didn't want to spew it here. Cause it's not even about me - but I found myself just stewing over everything all the time and wanting to let my fingers fly on and on about it as I sat down to my computer. But I demonstrated self-control - and I didn't do that. But in the process - I failed to mention all the things I love about my life. It wasn't that I wasn't still enjoying it - I was - it was just that my bouncy ball powers were yet to be fully revealed.

So now? Now is when I commence posting about my nice life and how much I love it. After all, since we're being honest, it's mostly about perspective isn't it? I prefer to focus on the blessings.

And forget about the person exceeding the speed limit down my little road....

Bouncy ball. Bouncy ball. Bouncy ball....

New Business Motto

I'm rubber. You're glue.
Whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you.