More crafty photos

A cute handbag with moon and star applique. Made out of a pair of old blue jeans and lined with leftover fabric from my wedding dress.

A plain onesie I decorated with a painted bird applique. I just paint the images onto the appliques with fabric paint.

A really bad photo of a really cute pin cushion.

Craft-tastic

The front applique on a onesie I decorated. There is another one with a different chicken on the back. Veda loves this one and carried it around with her until I finally just gave it to her!

We live in a tiny house. We are two adults, a 9-year-old boy and very active toddler living in less than 900 square feet with only 2-bedroom . This means the baby has to sleep in our room (less than ideal, to say the least). But nearly equally as alarming is the fact that my craft addiction has no place to call home.

Our family's only table (located in the dining/play/study/computer room) is almost always occupied by my sewing machine, ironing board, iron and stacks of fabric, patterns and sewing books. Sadly for my long-suffering family, this usually means that in order for us to eat a meal or for Birch to do his homework, the mounds of stuff must be moved to the floor...where it will promptly be inspected and tasted or even chewed on by Veda.

Behind the table, in one of our house's rare areas of actualy floor space, are bags of fabric, a basket of needlefelting supplies (securely tied shut! can't have Veda chewing on felting needles!), and usually some half-finished paintings or other semi-completed projects.

In the living room, in the corner behind one of Veda's toy boxes, sits my baskets of yarn. I had to move the crochet and knitting stuff to the closet, because Veda kept trying to joust with the needles. ("You'll poke your eye out!")

We do have plans...someday, when we win the lottery, we want to renovate our basement and make another bedroom, a play room and a craft area. Until then, though, we just keep shuffling stuff around.

Anyway, I have been very busy lately with my craftiness. I'm working on a sweater coat for Veda...the decorations look pretty awesome, but I have to say that the sewing job is beyond terrible. Really. I'll take photos when I'm finished, but I am pretty embarrassed. It looks like it was assembled by hallucinating monkeys.

Other than that, Ive been making more of my crazy felt mushrooms and some other felt things and clothes that are up now on my etsy site (http://www.dreamsoftrees.etsy.com/). Also doing a bit of screen printing. I just can't stop!

married...with children

We are officially official now. On 9-09-2009, I did what I said I'd never do and got married...again.

We went into this whole wedding thing with the thought that we would do it as simply and inexpensively as possible. And, by "Modern Bride" standards (RIP "Modern Bride"!) we did just that. But by our standards, things did end up going a bit overboard in the end. Both our bank accounts ended up overdrawn and we went a bit further down debtors' road. But we did have truly, the best possible wedding. I - with 2 previous wedding experiences to draw from -- like to refer to it as "my last best wedding." :-)

Just so you know, getting married when you already have two kids to take care of -- one of whom is a nursing toddler -- is an entirely different deal than tying the knot when you have no responsibilities. For one thing, the whole idea of a romantic honeymoon for two is pretty much out...or it was for us, anyway. There was no way I was leaving my nursling for very long, plus we don't have the money (or the room on my credit card) to pay for a trip to Jamaica or something.

So the wedding we ended up with was this: We chose the date 9-9-09 because Scott likes 9's and it seemed cool (yes, I can admit that). Nevermind that it fell on a Wednesday. Then we gathered all the friends and family we could find that were willing to get together in N.C. on a weekday to see us united in unholy matrimony and asked them to drive to the Linville Gorge with us...in the rain...and hike a mile up a steep mountain (Hawksbill). And that's where we had our ceremony.

It was pretty epic. It really did rain all day. Everyone was wet and cold and miserable and many were more than a little unhappy about the strenuous hike. Some family members were in their 70's (hi mom and dad!) and some were in grade school (Birch and Syd!) or even still nursing (Veda!). But everybody made it to the top, although my sister at one point turned to me and growled "I am NOT having fun!" and my neice cried for the first 15 minutes of the climb. This is the same neice who also commented "I wish I was just sitting in a big comfy chair watching TV instead of climbing this dumb mountain!" Fortunately, Sydney was won over by the grandeur of Hawksbill once we reached the summit and asked if we could "do it again tomorrow!"

And once we got to the top, it was truly amazing!! The sun came out and the mountains and rivers of the Linville Gorge surrounded us green serenity. My old friend T-Bone, who conveniently happens to be ordained in the Church of Universal Light (a very reputable online fellowship, I hear!) performed the ceremony. Scott and I read vows we had written the night before. Veda and I wore dresses that I had made for the occasion. Sydney (my flower girl) and I had crowns and I held a bouquet we made that morning from flowers and herbs grown in my garden (plus some crepe myrtle I stole from the parking lot at Abele's Restaurant in Morganton where we stopped for lunch...thanks Abele's!).

That night, after we drove back, we had dinner at a nice restaurant downtown (Magnolia's) then Scott and I spent the next two nights at the Chestnut Street Inn in Asheville, driving home during the day to be with the kids and visit with everyone. That Saturday our good friends Jenn and Brett hosted an amazing celebration for us at their house...friends of ours were there from all over the country. It was completely incredible to see so many old friends from so far away. I will never forget it.

Wow...as I write this, I'm realizing we really did have a dream wedding. It was perfect!

sleep-over

Birch had his friend Michael over for a sleep-over last night. Michael is a Good Kid. He listens when you tell him something, is polite, eats what you serve him and makes sparkling conversation for a 9-year-old boy. Plus he always wears a black fedora...like every day. Sheesh. How adorable. No complaints here for him.

However, I do have complaints about MY kid who morphs into some sort of deranged, moody Yeti creature whenever his friends come over. His manners deteriorate until he is ape-like, he gets smart-mouthed and pushy, he whines more, begs more, wheedles more and generally gets on my nerves more. Ugh. Can you fire your own kid? If so, he is totally fired.

Part of it is the fact that they stay up so late and get up so damned early (what's up with that? I remember doing that and I still can't fathom why...at what point is it that we started to cherish sleep...i can't remember that either...). This, I reason exhausts them and makes their emotions a bit raw. Then there's the sugar thing...

I'm not big on feeding kids sugar. He gets more than his share, but mainly because he is an amazing opportunist and takes advantage of the fact that I am often distracted with work or the baby to grab extra helpings of whatever sweets are available. But today...(((sigh)))...okay, brace yourselves...this story is classic....

I took the boys to the movies. The baby will NOT sit still for a movie, so I get them seated and give them $5 to buy "popcorn and anything else they need" knowing that popcorn is $2 each and water is provided free. They said popcorn was what they wanted, so i figure the worst they can do is get a candybar to share between them...this I can handle. So, then I take the baby outside to walk around, etc. and later I find out that instead of getting popcorn, they used the money to buy 5 - $1 candy bars!!!!! AND...this is the best part...Michael doesn't like candy that much, so my son ate 4 of the candy bars...by himself!!!

Can you imagine this??? Can you imagine eating 4 normal sized snickers, m&m's or whatever...ALL AT ONCE??? He didn't even act hyper afterwards. It's spooky, really.

I love sweets, personally, but even I am dumbfounded by this. Is he some sort of sugar mutant? How does his body process it all? really.

My Big Fat Jewish-Hawaiian-Japanese Wedding

I'm clearly quite insane. Evidence: This past weekend I took The Boy and The Baby on a 2-day trip to Boston for my good friend's wedding. By myself.

Actually, I must still cling to some remnant of sanity because I opted out of the 24-hour long drive (visions of Veda shrieking from the bondage of her carseat for miles and endless miles....Birch asking every 30 seconds "are we there yet?") and I decided to break out the old credit card for some plane fare.

In retrospect, the travel part wasn't too bad...compared to something like 12 hours of back labor or getting your wisdom teeth removed with no painkiller. Veda had been getting her eye teeth the whole week before, which meant about 6 nights of screaming (Veda screaming, me crying) and no sleep, but thankfully she seemed to come out of it by the time we left.

We had to drive 2-1/2 hours to Charlotte for the flight, so I decided to spend the night before the trip at my friends' house in Cornelius to break up the travel time a little. That was fun. We drank wine and at homemade pizza the night before...stayed up a bit late and drank a bit too much wine, but hey, you only live once.

Anyway, we lucked out on the flight up...even with a stupid layover in D.C., we had no delays (what are the odds?) and the kids were great. Birch was super-helpful and Veda traveled like a pro. Thank goddess for my Ergo. Can't imagine doing the trip without it.

The wedding was so cool...Daryl (mi amigo from way, way back) is Japanese-American and grew up in Hawaii and his bride Becky is Jewish and the descendant of Holocaust survivors. So what we had was a wedding with Jewish klezmer band (accordian and all), leis, paper cranes, an aikido demonstration, singing in Hebrew and a rousing round of "banzai" at the end of the reception. They held it at a pre-Revolutionary War era farm in the Berkshires and it was just fantastically beautiful...flowers, flowers, everywhere.

And bonus...I even saw (or experienced) a ghost when I was upstairs in the old farmhouse nursing the baby. It was so freaky...it was just me and Veda up there in this incredibly old house full of antiques. It was totally quiet and really, really hot. We went into a bedroom and I locked the door with a bolt lock so Veda couldn't run out of the room and onto the stairs. We sat down on an antique sofa and I had just whipped out a boob, when the bolt flew up and the door slammed open. It startled me because I thought somebody was coming into the room (even though it was bolted from the INSIDE...duh!) but there was NOBODY THERE!!!! Yeah. Veda laughed. I sat there nervously for about 10 seconds, then we got up and left.

So, now we're home...exhausted but happy. It was a fun trip. And now that I've done it, I'm ready to do it again. Hey...maybe if I come into some money I can go back to my globe-trotting road rat ways...this time with babies in tow. :-)

the summer passes

Birch being his usual silly self at Scott's birthday celebration last week.

It seems impossible that it is almost the end of July! Thursday is Veda's birthday, then the party Saturday night, then the following weekend me and the kids go to Boston for Daryl's wedding. Every day is a mix of laid back and crazy. Birch is doing skateboard camp right now, then next week cartooning camp. And of course these endless therapy sessions. Right now he goes at least 4 times a week!



I'm just realizing how completely drained I am from all these therapy sessions. I can only imagine how he feels. But we have to do it. Thanks to the sorry state of our nation's healthcare non-system at the moment, I only can afford therapy for him through the medicaid I get because of my status as a "single" mom right now. My income qualifies me and the kids. However, once Scott and I get married in September, I won't be a "single" parent anymore and his income, although inadequate to pay for insurance for me and the kids, will bump us out of the medicaid qualifying range.



So. In September, my kids and I will lose our medicaid, Birch will no longer be able to do therapy, and we must squeeze it all in over the summer. One summer for a 9 year old to learn how to pronounce sounds and deal with physical maneuvers he's never been able to do! I wish we'd found out about his challenges sooner. Ah...how a mother can torture herself. BUT, the wonderful thing is how Birch has stepped up and dealt with all this...he is learning his "R" sounds!!! He is writing in cursive!!! It's truly amazing. Miraculous.

now i'm cooking with gas!

Today I got a stove. It's white and clean and perfect...and it cooks with GAS! Yes, I am a huge gas stove nerd. I've wanted this freakin' stove for like 20 years, and now thanks to the convenience of craigslist and a my willingness to take advantage of a down-on-her-luck woman forced to thin her belongings in order to buy food, I am now the proud owner of an almost-new, pristine, snow-white gas range.

I swoon over gas ranges solely because of the year I lived in that old apartment building owned by the old Bulgarians in St. Pete, FL. Our particular apartment had been inhabited by the owners for quite a long time, and the appliances were vintage, to say the least. There were lots of other perks like a very cool ironing board that folded up into the wall and a large selection of choice, used leopard-print furniture available for free in the storage room below us. But the coolest thing was the huge, ancient gas stove that sat like a tired elephant against the wall of our kitchen.

It had a ton of big, clunky dials on the front and it was really about as big as a VW Bug. You had to light it with matches and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't pass any modern safety inspections. When you had the oven on, the kitchen heated up so much you could have fired pottery on the kitchen table. I loved it. Despite its oldness and the danger factor, it was the most perfect cooking device I had ever used. Gas burners allow you to be detailed and precise about how you cook your food. I was spoiled. And ever after I have pined for the blue flame of gas.