homemade larabars

My friend Sarah posted this delicious recipe for homemade larabars (her post here.) They are so good, but a little different from the “real” larabars. I used dates and dried apples for the dried fruit portion and I left out the flax seeds because I forgot to buy some when I was at the store. I just added a little extra almonds to make up for it. I also used sweetened coconut and left out the honey because that’s the only kind I had. I wanted these to have a really smooth texture so that Edda would eat them, so I ground everything up according to the recipe, then put it all back into the food processor together and processed it until it was smooth. Edda and I have been having these as our afternoon snack every day since I made them. They are downright addictive!

Now I really want to find more uses for coconut oil. It smells wonderful!

New free pattern! My perfect bib.

I just added the pattern for the bib that I posted about earlier to my free patterns page!

Please let me know if you find any errors or have difficulties with the pattern.

You can also download the pattern here: My Perfect Bib (right-click to save the pdf)

finally some knitting

I finally have some knitting to show you. I keep forgetting to photograph the knitting that I’ve been doing! (sorry about the grainy photos, it’s been very dim inside.)

I have finally come up with a bib design that meets my rather picky requirements. In my opinion, a knitted bib must be:

• garter stitch or some other thick stitch… not stockinette and definitely not lace (lace=holes and who wants holes in their bibs?)
• dense but not stiff
• easy to make because I don’t want to spend hours on something that’s intended to get nasty
• long enough to cover the baby’s chest because short bibs just don’t cut it
• cute, but not fussy… and nothing chunky appliqued to the front to get gunked up with food
• tied (not buttoned) so as to be adjustable

This bib meets all of those requirements, so I will probably be making many of them. It seems that many people are concerned about putting ties on baby things, but I feel that if your baby is being supervised properly it is highly unlikely that he will strangle himself on his bib.

I am writing up a pattern for this bib that I hope to put up on my “free patterns” page today or tomorrow. It depends on how long my babies sleep for me this afternoon!

a knitting pocket

I sewed a little knitting pocket (for taking projects around) as a birthday present for a friend of mine. I really liked the method that I found here on gussysews.com. This may very well be the most commonly accepted method for sewing a zippered pouch, but I am too much of a novice sew-er to know if it is or not. I just thought it was neat! The zipper ends up fully enclosed between the outer fabric and the lining.

Making this little project really made me want to sew more. I don’t do it very much because it is so difficult to take everything out and put it all away every time. Plus, I am always worried about one of littlies getting a pin in the foot or mouth or pulling the iron over. I am considering moving Walter into Edda’s room and taking his room over as my new sewing area. Seriously considering. I just can’t decide if it would destroy all sleep forever, because sleep is something that I consider to be more precious than sewing.

baby lizards!!!

You’ll have to excuse me for a few moments while I indulge my inner animal-lover/crazy seven-year-old. (Technically you won’t have to, but I hope that you will.)

I was digging away in my flowerbed this morning, planting petunias and dusty miller, when I accidentally dug up a lizard nest! A skink nest, to be precise. (skinks on wikipedia) There were five hatchling lizards and four eggs. The eggs started hatching soon after I found them. Sooooo cool! Edda was not really all that excited, but I sure was.

If Edda was a bit older, I would totally have launched into the whole “let’s make this a learning experience” homeschool project deal. I guess that will have to wait a few years.

Edda showed polite interest, but not much more than that. Why yes, that is my camera lens cap down in the dirt. Don’t tell Ryan.

Here we see the former location of the lizard nest. I am sad to have ruined it, but I couldn’t really put it back so…. petunias.

Walter didn’t even show polite interest, but that is probably because Edda had just squirted him with the hose.

Feeling blessed today

I was reading MommyCoddle  (one of my favorite blogs) and I really enjoyed her post today: rejoice evermore. She mentions the HBO show about John Adams, which I also very much enjoyed…. what an amazing life he had. I’m feeling very blessed this Independence Day.

We are going to a friend’s house for some delicious smoked barbeque later. And, because it also happens to be their oldest daughter’s birthday, we will be having birthday cake as well. Hopefully Edda and Walter will be able to stay awake until it’s dark enough for fireworks!

Do you have any big plans today?

I plan to do some flower picking and baby snuggling sometime today…