…does not leave much time for non-baby related activities.  It took me an entire day to clean off a desk.  Every time I got to it, the baby started crying.  I don’t really mind because he’s my primary responsibility, and he’s just so darn cute.  How bad is it that his crying face makes me smile?  Not his super intense crying face because that breaks my heart, but his moderately unhappy easy to fix crying face is very precious.

Most evenings, there’s a couple of hours where Bill and I relax and watch tv.  I started a new project because none of my WIPs were doing it for me.  I’m loving how it is turning out.

This is the Cheques Shawl and it’s an easy pattern to memorize.  I absolutely love the yarn by Becoming Art.  The colors are so beautiful and it’s awesome to work with.  This is the Agave Sport in Sanguine Sky.  It is my second time knitting with the Agave base yarn.  I did a drop stitch scarf in the fingering weight and it is amazing.

This is my second time working this pattern.  I started a shawl in Madelinetosh Tosh Merino DK.  I love the yarn and colorway.  Love it.  And I love the pattern.  But I’m not happy with the two together.  The fabric is turning out heavier than I want.

I’m pretty sure I’m going to frog it.  Don’t get me wrong, I think it looks great, it’s just not what I want.  I have my eye on another pattern for this yarn.  As much as I know frogging it is the right thing to do, I haven’t done it yet.  I’m having trouble undoing all that work.  Oh well, there’s no hurry.

That’s the extent of my crafting.  It’s just the right amount for now.

But that’s okay.  I certainly don’t feel my age, and I don’t really act my age.  And now I have an adorable little baby boy to help keep me young.  We had a relatively quiet day.  Last night Bill made delicious strawberry cupcakes.  Very yum!  I had one as a pre-breakfast.  Then Bill made me delicious birthday ebelskivers for actual breakfast.  He and Joshua got me some super great gifts which we opened this morning.  All the parents called even though I didn’t talk to all of them.  Bill was out at a yoga workshop in the afternoon so it was just me and the little guy.  I did some unpacking while he napped and then he kept me busy for the rest of the time.  I have a few calls to return tomorrow, but I appreciate everyone trying to talk to me on my birthday!

We did make it out for a special birthday dinner.  We had a groupon for Mexican food, including Margaritas, and I have missed having Margaritas.  I’m not a big drinker but I do enjoy me a Margarita every one in awhile. Joshua was very well behaved and dinner went smoothly.  Then we came home and it was dinner time for Joshua, then bath time and bed time.  And it is certainly bed time for this mama!

On a slightly different topic, I have been doing a little bit of crafting.  Not much, but I knit a hat for the baby and I’m working on a shawl.  I’ve been meaning to take photos and blog about the projects.  Don’t worry, this won’t be a full-time baby blog, but right now he’s just so darn cute I can’t help myself.

I have also been thinking about my goals for the new year so I put up some yarn to destash on ravelry.  I should still destash more, and I might.  At least this is a start.  I queued up some projects too.  I’ve got really good stuff to work on, unfortunately I’m lacking the time at the moment.  I also counted the number of books on my “to be read” bookcase.  It came in at 75 which was not as bad as I thought it would be.  Those are actual books and doesn’t include what I have on my kindle.  My main concern is the amount of physical stuff I have which is why I can easily ignore the electronic bits.  In the process of unpacking I’ve been looking at lots of my fabric and am kind of excited to work on some projects!  I also really want to tackle my photo albums.  I have the photo albums from when I was a child which I am redoing since the original ones are falling apart, and I have a bunch of photos that need to be put in albums.  It is a time consuming project but I should try and spend one hour a week on it.  At least then I would make some progress on it.

That’s what’s going on here!  Birthday girl, out!

2012 promises to be a very different year for me.  The addition of the sweetest little baby boy to our family will present wonderful new challenges and opportunities.  I’m so excited to be staying home with him.  I’m also looking forward to getting back to yoga and finding time to pick up a shift or two at my local yarn store.  And somewhere I hope there’s time for crafting.  Bill is super supportive of all my activities that I know he’ll help me find the time.  We’ve also got a lot to do around the house, but want to balance that with spending time and doing things with our son.  When I think of a key phrase for the new year, one that comes to mind is “finding balance” but the one I’m going to go with is “be in the moment.”

That phrase is constantly running through my head as I spend time with my family.  We turn off the tv, put away our cell phones, set our books aside and just spend time together.  I’m taking in as much as I can.  As we feed him, cuddle, rock him to sleep, I just stare at him and take in all these precious moments.  It’s going to fly by, I know it is.  So “be in the moment” is my mantra for the year.

I didn’t do so well on my overall goals for 2011.  I read a lot (39 books) but didn’t cut down on my stash of books to be read.  I worked on a lot of projects and finished a lot, but didn’t reduce my yarn stash (in fact I have probably increased it).  I did live a healthier lifestyle in 2011, and weight less than I did a year ago!  I’m going to work at those same overall goals I had for 2011 and see if I can actually make some serious progress on them.  Moving was a very large motivator.  It’s a little ridiculous to have more craft room boxes than kitchen boxes.  So for 2012:

1.  Read 25 books.  I’ve adjusted my target because I know I won’t have as much time to read.  The real challenge will be to not buy any new books.

2.  Get rid of stuff.  Seriously.  My stashes are out of control.  Reel it in, girlfriend and make some progress on this!

3.  Continue to live a healthier lifestyle.  Get back to yoga, try jogging again, eat less takeout and eat all the fruits and veggies we get from the CSA and farmer’s market.

The thing that worked well for me was monthly goals (although I fell off at the end of the year).  So for January I want to:

1.  Finish unpacking craft room.

2.  Read two books.

3.  Make quilt sandwich with my mystery quilt.

4.  Update yarn stash on ravelry and identify yarn to be destashed.

5.  Work on granny stripe blanket.  Add 10 stripes.

I think it is pretty accurate to say that we are living in a state of chaos these days.  We officially moved on Sunday.  It took five men eight hours (of serious hustling) to get us moved over.  They moved about 95% of our stuff.  Over the past couple of days we’ve made about ten more trips, filling up Bill’s Forester with various drawers, framed things, boxes full of miscellaneous stuff…  We still have to move over our outdoor potted plants, bird bath, a few miscellaneous things still in the garage, and all our refrigerated and frozen goods.  The fridge stuff will have to wait until next week because the one we have in the garage is small and will most likely be full of our catered Thanksgiving dinner.  Our kitchen is nonexistent at the moment.  It looks like this:

We have a little station with a toaster oven and microwave.  I’ve set up a little area with our plates and various food items.  Definitely a “making do” situation for the next week.  We will kitchen cabinets next week, hopefully early next week, and then I think the kitchen will come together pretty quickly. We will be heating up our Thanksgiving dinner at the old house tomorrow and bringing it back to eat.

Almost all the boxes were put into what will eventually be my craft room and the garage.  And the garage was already about half full with appliances and various things the contractor needs for the house.  There’s a few boxes in the different bedrooms, but not that many so we still have room to maneuver and get things set up.  We need to spend some time this weekend getting the box room in order.  I think it will be at least ten days before any of the kitchen stuff can be unpacked, and my craft room is the lowest priority.  We need to get those boxes in separate corners of the room so that we can address everything else.  But even in our bedroom, we are in a bit of a holding pattern because we aren’t get the house insulated until December 9th and the attic access is in our closet.  We don’t want to load up the closet only to have to unload the stuff for the workmen to get access, or even worse have that stuff get insulation residue on our clean clothes (or any of my shoes!).

Thank goodness my dad has been here because he’s been a huge help.  He was on his hands and knees helping us get the floors ready the night before we moved in (so much construction dust!), packing boxes, moving boxes around, etc.  He was originally going to help Bill do the attic insulation but after some thorough research, we decided it would be better to have someone else do it.  There’s other “little” jobs around the house that we can have him help with.  There’s no shortage of things to be done!  We have agreed to take a day this weekend to get out of the house and do something fun and non-housing related.

The animals have been super through the move.  It’s going to be a tough couple of weeks for them as the workmen are here finishing up the bathroom, kitchen and laundry room.  That’s right, I don’t think I’ve mentioned that the main bathroom is still under construction, though the shower and toilet work, but no sink yet.  We’ve been sharing the teeny tiny bathroom in the master suite.  Chaos, I tell you!

I think that in a few weeks we will look back at this and laugh.  Right now, I just want to crawl under the covers and take a nap!

I got next to nothing accomplished.  And what I did accomplish, I did not photograph.  The temperature heated up and we had a week in the 90s which made me pretty much useless.  I had been making super progress on my girlfriend’s quilt and then I ran out of thread.  I got more but it’s three weeks later and I still haven’t touched it.  Now that the weather is better, I really need to get back to it.  I started a book at the end of August, and you’d think it was War and Peace with how long it took me to finish.  I just finished it Friday.  It was Full Dark House by Christopher Fowler, a mystery set in World War II London.  I really did enjoy it, I just didn’t pick it up very frequently.  I did finish my Sunshine Day Afghan and drop stitch scarf but that was the extent of my productivity.  At least I got something done.  My in-laws were in town for a visit, and as much as I’d like to blame them as a distraction, no can do.  We had a lovely visit and I had plenty of time to relax and knit.

There was one little thing we did that took up a bit of time in September.  We bought a house!  We started looking in August and it didn’t take us very long to find the right one.  It was built in the 1960s and hasn’t been updated so we are having some work done before we move in.  Meeting with contractors, shopping for appliances, filling out tons of paperwork…that took up a bit of our time.  I’ve even gotten started packing though we won’t be moving for a few weeks.  I’d rather do a little bit every day instead of rushing around at the last minute.  I’m excited to be moving and settling into our permanent home.  We’ve been living in a state of “make do” since we’ve been renting and it will be a relief to have our own place where we can come up with permanent solutions.  Like no more microwave in the craft room!  We’ve been storing a bit of furniture in the garage for when we got our own place so if it doesn’t fit in the new house, we can let it go.  And color!  I can put color on the walls.  There’s a lot of work to be done on the new house, but we are excited to see the transition from someone else’s 1960′s house to our updated home.  We are also trying to teach ourselves patience.  The transformation is going to be a multi-year process (and forever on-going), and I tend to want everything done now.  Margaret will be practicing patience.

Rather than add any new goals for October, I’m going to roll my unfinished September goals forward.  Hopefully I can make significant progress on that list, in addition to getting my packing done.  That should be more than enough to keep me busy!

of things in progress…

a quilt…

some scrapbooking…

granny squares…

and playing…

Bill walked through the door on Sunday morning with this super cheerful bouquet of sunflowers.  I have been enjoying them all week.  Sunflowers make me smile.  This morning I moved them into my craft room to make me happy while I persevered through my mystery quilt sawtooth star squares.  I thought I had finished these squares last week but when I looked at them, they were terrible.  They weren’t the right measurements and they were messy and after mulling it over for a couple of days, I decided to make a new set of them.  I saw them making my life difficult as I tried to put the quilt together.  It’s totally my choice to redo them, but it also kinda sucks.  They are the hardest, most time consuming part of the quilt.  The good news is that the second set is looking much better.  I am using my wing clipper ruler (which I forgot I had the first time around) and this batch is actually coming out square and they are the right size.  So while it’s tedious and boring, it was the right decision and my sunflowers make it a wee bit less painful.  I’m also going to do something with my reject squares, I’m just not sure what.

The other thing that makes my resewing less painful is this little kitty.  She makes me laugh ever day, if not multiple times a day.  She’s just so darn cute.  Gracie loves to stretch out on her back and show me her belly.  The best thing is that she lets me rub it.  I love the belly.

This summer has been the summer of lemonade.  I’ve pretty much cut out all soda (diet and regular) from my diet.  I kinda miss it because I do enjoy an ice cold Pepsi every now and then, but I know it’s not good for me.  And actually, I’ve gotten to the point where regular Pepsi is just too sweet for me.  Weird.  So this summer, my drink of choice has been lemonade.  And really only at dinner time.  But sometimes we go out, and an extra special treat is a strawberry lemonade.  Panera has a very delicious frozen strawberry lemonade.  We had some strawberries in the fridge and I decided to make my own strawberry lemonade.  I blended up a pint of very ripe strawberries with about 2 teaspoons sugar and ended up with strawberry puree which I poured over a glass of iced Simply Lemonade.  That pint of strawberries made about 4 or 5 glasses of strawberry lemonade, and I stored the puree in the fridge in a covered container.  I might also try it without the sugar; it all depends on how sweet the strawberries are and your sweet to tart preference.  Yum!

There’s lots of other things that make me happy, but I don’t have any more photographs of them.  I’ll have to work on that.

I had a productive weekend.  Productive mainly with the fun stuff which is always nice.  We relaxed in the morning, went for a walk, ran errands, ate out, did a little window shopping…  And then in the evening things got really exciting.  I pulled out all my needlepoint and cross stitch projects, photographed them all and updated my inventory.  I went through the stack, identified 80 projects to keep and over 30 to donate and/or sell on ebay.  80 is still a lot of projects, but I’m only keeping the projects I really like. The unfortunate thing is that most of the projects are medium to large sized projects so they will be more time consuming and it’s going to take me awhile to finish up those 80 in my stash. C’est la vie.

I also started a new project on Sunday.  It’s the Sunshine Day Afghan.  I’ve only done crocheted edges on afghans before so granny squares are a whole new world.  I worked on 4 squares yesterday from about 1:30 – 10:30 with a nap, dinner break, and other miscellaneous breaks.  After all that time, I had 2 squares fully complete and two squares half done.  At that rate, I might have this afghan done in 9 years.  Today things went better.  I’ve got the technique and while I’m still slow, I finished four more squares this afternoon.

I’m hoping to maybe do 2 – 4 squares a day.  We’ll see.  They are quite addictive.

It’s been a few days since my mom headed home after a wonderful visit.  But of course every visit with mom includes disappointment.  I hardly took any pictures, and there’s no picture of the two of us, or the three of us for that matter.  Ah well, it’s something I have to remember for next time.

I am all about balance, and our visit was a perfect blend of hanging out and getting things done.  I had a couple of projects I wanted my mom to help with, and help she did.  We went through my piles of fabric and found a bunch of stuff to donate, and my mom inherited a few things.  It helped created space and gave me room for the piles of fabric that were hanging out elsewhere in my craft room.  And now I only have stuff that I am going to use.  I also had some WIPs that have been sitting around for several months that Mom finished.  It was a win-win situation; I showed her how to do a blind stitch on the quilt binding, and she practiced by finishing my projects.

She helped me reorganize the closet in our guest room, we packed up 15 bags of stuff to take to Goodwill, she finished sewing and hemming two cotton dresses I had cut out a few weeks ago, and helped me fix some pants that needed fixing.  I’m probably missing things, but that was a lot of stuff.  Yay for Moms!

In between all that work, there was plenty of time for play.  We relaxed and knit while watching Seasons 1 and 2 of the Closer on DVD.  There were breakfasts out, coffee breaks, ice cream runs, an occasional walk, some shopping, and introduction to Jamba Juice and last, but not least, Transformers 3 in 3D.

Now that I’m seeing it all in black and white, it explains why it took me two days to recover after she left.  We had a super quiet 4th of July.  In fact, Bill napped in a chaise lounge while I sat outside stitching and watching the Cubs game.

We spent the evening watching tv and trying to keep our furry babies calm.  Neighbors were setting off (illegal) fireworks over our house and the animals were not enjoying it.  At all.  It actually made me a little nervous – little explosions being set off over our very dry, wood shingled roof.  It makes sense to me why fireworks are illegal here.  Thankfully there weren’t any problems and they stopped at a reasonable time.  Bill had off on the 5th which was a great bonus and we had a nice day together.  All in all, not a bad way to roll in the second half of the year.

We, at Casa Napier, are suffering from some pretty obnoxious jet lag.  We’ve been asleep by 8:45 and up between 4:30 and 5 am. It’s been like that for five days.  It’s horrible.  Last night, we managed to stay up until 10:30 and I slept in until 6:30!  Actually, my ideal time to wake up would be 7:30ish so I’m almost there. 5am is a tad early.  Especially on a Saturday.  But on Saturday, I gave up and pulled out a notepad to jot down a to do list.  I’ve had a bunch of little projects on my mind and I finally got them on paper.  We made a decent dent in the list this weekend.

I can’t say I contributed overly much to the project list.  I came back from vacation with a nasty cold and though every day I felt a little better, I still took things very easy.  But I helped a bit. Sunday was a much more productive day for me.  Saturday, we went shopping for two new chairs for our patio.  We have two comfy chairs with a footrest and one not as comfortable love seat. I’ve always wanted a chair where you could lean back and close your eyes for a little nap.  At one of our hotels in Greece, they had a papasan chair on the patio, and it got me thinking.  We are now the proud owners of two comfy papasan chairs and I can easily see myself putting my feet up, reading, and taking a little nap.  We wiped down all our patio furniture, vacuumed the “lovely” green carpeting that covers the concrete, and rearranged the furniture.  I think it looks very cozy out there.  (There’s no cushions in the chairs because I’m waiting for my covers to arrive.  I’m a big fan of covers; things get pretty dirty otherwise.) We turned our dining table and chairs 90 degrees and it gives us a little more room.  And the finishing touch is a colorful new doormat from Pier 1.  We still have a few more things to put away.  I’ll have to post a better picture later, cushions and all.

I’ve also had the attention span of a gnat lately, but one project that I’ve been able to concentrate on is needlepoint.  I’m finding it very relaxing and it requires less concentration than knitting.  It’s been at least two years since I’ve done any needlepoint and I’m really enjoying it.

I wish we could blame our lack of sleep on Bill’s minor biking mishap yesterday.  Unfortunately I think it was just bad luck.  Bill was biking to work on a trail, coming off a bridge, and he hit a slippery spot and ended up on the ground.  He thought he was okay at first and finished the remaining mile and a half.  Once the adrenaline wore off and he tried moving his left elbow, he realized he wasn’t 100%.  I picked him up at the office, dropped him at the ER, went to an appointment (I never have anything going on, but of course this happens on the one day I have something scheduled), picked him up at the ER, took him out for a special lunch, stopped  for dog food, and then brought him home to relax.  He’s doing pretty well, but not enjoying the inconvenience.  Thankfully, it’s temporary.

And that’s all for Casa Napier.  I think it’s enough, don’t you?