Being Crafty

Alright, I can cook. And I can sort of sew, I mean I get by. Last Christmas while my grandma was in town I bought a book on how to teach kids to crochet and a skein of yard. I figure with the help of the Grandma and this book I should be able to get the whole crochet thing down. Well I did. Maybe not the "whole" crochet thing, but I did make each of my children a hat and a scarf. Then I found a cute pattern on-line for monster baby booties, so I've been working on some of those too. I'm still pretty limited in the crochet department, but I still have the desire to branch out and give knitting a try. Problem is, my grandma is no where at hand, and the books I find are incredibly intimidating, until today.

A little backtracking here, yesterday I finally broke down and bought some pregnancy clothes. At 26 weeks, it was about time. Problem is I only ended up with two tops and two bottoms. Maternity clothes are expensive. Besides being expensive, I find most of them ugly. I refuse to pay good money for ugly clothes. So later that day I went online and checked out Old Navy, The Gap, and a few other online sites for maternity clothes. The only things I would be willing to pay for are the things on clearance, which isn't bad, but I hate buying clothes online, I'm lucky if anything fits properly, and a lot of maternity clothes look cute on the hanger but look like a circus tent once put on.

Back to today, so today the kids and I headed out to the fabric store, because I had this genius idea that if I couldn't find cute affordable maternity clothes I would just make some. Again I hit a snag, because maternity patterns are near impossible to find, and even if they're in the pattern book, that doesn't mean the store actually has them on hand. So I looked at some regular patterns that maybe could pass for maternity clothes, but I don't think I have enough seamstress knowledge to comfortably adapt regular patterns to fit an ever growing belly. So once again, frustrated and aggravated, I headed out of the fabric store empty handed when I came across some clearance items. And just like it was waiting to lift my spirits, I saw this Mickey Mouse & Friends I Taught Myself to Knit kit. Marked down to under $5, it included two sets of knitting needles, two yard needles, stitch markers, and a how-to book. I figure if this book can help kids teach themselves, I should be able to muddle through. As far as pregnancy clothes, I maybe have hit another road block, but at least I can give this knitting thing a go. Next up . . . canning!

Fort Booth

This is what my kids do when the power goes out. No internet, video games, movies, or Wii to brain suck them into a stupor. I'm thinking the power should go out more often ;)

My First Cake

My neighbor called me last week and asked if I would make a cake for her daughter's 9th birthday. After taking a couple of classes my confidence is a bit better, I'm still no great cake decorator, but figured I need the practice so I told her yes. Now to me, if a cake isn't chocolate somewhere in there it just isn't worth the calories, but her daughter doesn't like chocolate (I know, strange child), so she wanted a strawberry cake with pink frosting. Talk about pink overload. And having never made a strawberry cake before, I wasn't sure where to begin. I've seen strawberry cake mixes, but I refuse to go that route. So I found a strawberry cake recipe from scratch, and made some cupcakes from it to test on some other friends. They liked it, so the cake part was figured out. I still needed a filling. I don't really like filling cake with just more frosting, too sugary, too much frosting, besides I wanted a strawberry filling. I was hesitant to use just fresh strawberries because they can mold once in the cake and they are very wet and and all that extra moisture leaches into the cake. I thought a curd filling might be nice, I love lemon curd, and wondered if I could do a strawberry curd. I couldn't find any recipes for strawberry curd, so I adapted a lemon curd recipe, but the results were not what I wanted. Unfortunately a waste of ingredients. But a learning lesson at least. I ended up finding a strawberry cream cake filling recipe and gave that a try. It uses fresh strawberries, sugar, water, gelatin and some cream, that's it. But the consistency is very jello like. I tried thinning it with some extra cream, and went ahead and used it in the final cake, I'll have to wait for some feedback. I asked my neighbor to pick out some flowers that she wanted used, she chose yellow mums, white daisies, and pink primroses. Mums are not my favorite to make, but at least I got some extra practice making them for the cake, and I think I greatly increased my mum making ability. So the final product is a strawberry cake with strawberry cream filling with pink butter cream frosting. Pink overload it is, but for a little girl, hopefully it will please.

Blogger is Driving Me Crazy!!!!!

Ugh! I write a post, then download photos, and my formatting gets all jacked up. And I mean All Jacked Up.

I cannot move the photos around like I used to, scrolling down until I get to where I want to put them, because when I hit the bottom of the page it just stops. Won't let me scroll down to move a photo. It didn't used to do this, what is going on?

Therefore I can only upload one photo at a time, because if there is already a photo on the page, I can't move past it with another. Ugh! Can you tell I'm annoyed? Plus I keep telling the kids to leave me alone, and I'll get this done sooner. But there is no such thing as leaving me alone. Even the most mundane things are so important to them, that they must interrupt, so what should take me five minutes, takes me thirty. Then they complain about what is taking me so long.

So here is one photo to help counteract all my bitchiness. New PJ's from Grandma DeeDee.

***And it did it again, I added my photo, and had to go back and correct my formatting and could only move the photo one page at a time.

20 Weeks

Yesterday was the first day of my 20th week of gestation of Booth baby #5. Today I had my sonogram and check-up. The good news to me is that I haven't gained a pound. Amazing. I figure I have the weight to spare, so why not pass it on to the kid. The nurse seemed a little less enthused. She asked if I had been sick, so I reminded her that at my last appointment I was recovering from the Moroccan Monkey Flu, and she acted like she knew what I was talking about about, "oh yea, that's a bad one". See my neighbor, who is from Morocco, went overseas to visit her sister in London, and then her parents in Morocco with her girls. Once they arrived back home, they drove straight from the airport to children's hospital since her three year old had diarrhea and was vomiting for about 24 hours. They told her it was a simple stomach virus, not to worry. But then her one year old got it. Then her in-laws got it. Then my friend, then her kids, who then graciously shared it with my kids, and of course me. So I penned this nasty bug the "Moroccan Monkey Flu". And I don't care if it all started in London, Morocco just sounds more exotic. So anyway, at my last appointment I hadn't gained any weight either. Since then I've had a bout with my gall bladder, the worst middle ear infection in my history of middle ear infections, and a couple of incidents of passing out. While on the potty. Nothing like picking yourself up off the floor, bare butted, with a black eye to show for it all. "No Vince did not clock me, I passed out on the potty. Really. No, I'm not joking." Besides all that, the baby looked good. He/she is breach (but that can change several times between now and the 36th week), has a good heart rate, and is measuring in at the 50th percentile. Not a whole lot to report at this stage. The only catch was that the baby's femur is measuring short. Which is an indicator of Down's. But, I went through this with Annamaria too, and it turns out she just had a short femur because she is a tiny. So I can have a level 3 sonogram to look for more markers. But even so the only thing that could tell us indefinitely would be an amniocentesis, and since that can cause a miscarriage we're not willing to take that risk. And even if something was wrong, we wouldn't do anything about it anyway. So now I'm debating with myself to go for the level 3 sonogram or not. Any further information they might give me would not be conclusive anyway, but might give more of an indication of what's going on. Then again, I may be worrying myself for nothing, I may just be carrying another little pixie person. It's the not knowing bothers me.

Socialized Health Care, oh! . . . Auto Repair

I came across this man's blog, and his recent post was a little fictionalized funny about socialized auto repair. The thing is, it's not so funny, and not so fictional. This man is an ER doctor in Tennessee, his perspective is interesting. Check is out . . .

http://grouchatrighttruth.blogspot.com/2009/06/socialized-auto-repair-and-car-care.html

Stomach Ache Inducing

I have a stomach ache. This stomach ache has nothing to due with too much coffee, bad eating habits, or even pregnancy. This stomach ache has everything to do with a headline I read online this morning regarding GM filing for bankruptcy protection. The same GM that received $50 billion in bailout money. It they were bailed out why are they filing for bankruptcy, in my naive mind, I thought that was what the bailout money was to avoid. Where did the money go? Is there any accountability? I read a blog post that stated my opinion perfectly, "GM should have had to do from the start what every struggling company is forced to do– file for bankruptcy on their own, its called the free market– but we were told that disaster lurked if this were to happen and that the government needed to give them a bailout. The government gave them billions of our money and they still have to file for bankruptcy, this could have been done months ago at no expense to the taxpayer and with no government interference." I'm disgusted.