Look It's Hazel Again

I've been feeling bloggy lately so I apologize if you are getting tired of hearing from me so often.

It's so pretty out there. Here's last night's sunset, from our front porch.

Here's my belly today, 39 weeks.



This morning I had the first thought I have had since the beginning of the pregnancy that resembles any kind of wishing I weren't pregnant much longer. For a brief moment, I wished that I could bend forward as far as I could pre-pregnancy. Thankfully, I have not much more than 21 days to wait, if that. More likely around 10 days. But who knows. Could be today.

I'm off to make cookies. I made the dough yesterday using a recipe from allrecipes.com, which is my favorite recipe site, and found what looks to be an excellent icing recipe as well. I'll let you know. Heck I'll post photos.

I just uploaded photos for the first time on our new PC. I also uploaded a video of Stanley skiing on Christmas Eve, so I'm posting it here just to figure out how to do it and see how well it works on the blog. It's 4 sec long. Eventually I hope to post lots of videos of Blueberry.

Well it seems not to be working now; I'll leave it for now and see if it fixes itself.

And now it seems to work, at least for me. Do let me know.

That's it for today.

Pour Yourself a Cup of Tea and Listen to Hazel Ramble

It's currently -1 F in Saint Paul, with a wind chill of -15. The cats are doing what they can to stay warm.



I finished everything on my list yesterday (Yaaay!) except making cookie dough and working on the mudroom. I don't know what my deal is with the cookies. Just make them already. Perhaps I'm putting it off because I ordered 2 sets of 3 stackable cooling racks from Amazon the day before yesterday, which will be a great space saver while baking, allowing me to make way more cookies at a time, and I'd like to be able to use them sooner rather than later. This morning Amazon emailed me to say that it would be shipped (or arrive?) on the 20th. But I can't wait that long, and neither can Blueberry. Or who knows, maybe we can.

With the mudroom, I ran into issues with studs and the lack thereof. But Stanley (himself a stud) helped me figure it out when he got home so I will work on it today. Maybe.

Yesterday I set up the sewing machine and read through the manual. Now I theoretically know how to use it. But there is no substitute for hands-on experience so today I'm going to grab some thread and fabric and see what happens. Here's something I'm adding to the overly-long list of things I want to sew:


It's a bed caddy that is attached by tucking it into the mattress. This particular one is by Ann Gish, costs $65, and I saw it in House Beautiful. I plan to spend way less than $65 on my homemade caddy. I like this idea because it will unclutter the nightstand, and if I should happen to make the bed, you won't see it or the stuff in it. The only issue I have is that the fact that I want it makes me feel kind of old; it's definitely something my mom would have bought if she came across it. I'll do my best to make it look young and hip. Maybe I'll use a skull-and-crossbones fabric. Excellent. So hip.

Thanks to Tanya and Louise for your comments yesterday, and also Lotus* (my sister) for her stealth comment via email. Louise, I'm intrigued about making fitted diapers out of prefolds. I guess fitteds hold leaks better than prefolds? I for sure don't have the sewing skills to do that right now but maybe I will learn quickly. Now more than ever, I'm hoping Blueberry waits until well past her due date (but not too long of course) so that I have a lot of time to learn. But would I really take advantage of the extra time? That wouldn't be like me.

Tanya and Lotus, thank you for suggesting Spirit in Action and The Center for Nonviolent Communication as organizations our church could support. I'm going to bring this up to the group. I think it's an interesting coincidence that you two work for similar organizations. My church supports a variety of charities of different types, but I don't think we currently donate to peace- and justice-oriented groups; that might be a good void to fill.

I feel like doing a little spring cleaning and I am wondering if anyone would suffer if I deleted The Blog of Unnecessary Quotation Marks from the list of blogs I like. They update several times per day and once you've seen a few misuses of quotation marks, you kind of get the idea of what's out there. This is to be contrasted with Cake Wrecks, which is more likely to surprise me. So, I'm deleting the quotes blog. On a similar note, I am thinking of changing the look of this blog a little; mainly just the banner at the top to something I enjoy looking at rather than the peacock with the somewhat self-deprecating alliteration.


*Name changed.

Laundry List

Just checking in, nothing exciting to report. I'm in the process of getting a bunch of crap done today. Here is the rundown.

Accomplished since this morning:

1. Put away laundry. It was really piling up. Since I like laundry, I am pretty good about washing, drying, folding, and taking it to the bedroom, but then it just sits in the hamper for too long. Not sure why putting it away is such a problem.
2. Emailed a friend about a movie. We will probably see "Up in the Air".
3. Did 3 years worth of document shredding. Bank statements, credit card applications, etc. It took quite a while and it feels great to have it done. It was backed up because for a while, until just recently, we didn't shred things as they came in. So I am hoping I won't have to do that much shredding at one time ever again.
   
4. Sewed Stanley's belt loop back onto his jeans, and warned him not to use that particular belt loop to hoist them up, because I am an amateur seamstress.
5. Took down the Christmas tree. The holidays are officially over. Spring is coming!!!

Yet to be accomplished:

1. Put all the Christmas stuff in the attic crawl space.
   
2. Clean out the fireplace.
3. Transfer files from my MacBook to our new, clean, shiny, desktop PC. I may have to give my MacBook back in April when my appointment ends, and meanwhile, the PC is much more enjoyable to use, except that none of my files are on it.
4. Send a report to group leader about reputations of all the charities our church supports. I am serving on a board whose purpose is to re-assess the ways the church spends its money and human resources. One charity we support is the Heifer Foundation, which gives cows and other animals to families in impoverished countries so they can raise them for food, breed them and give the offspring to other families. It seems like a great idea. Teach a man to fish, etc. etc. In general, the Heifer Foundation is highly regarded. But I came across articles such as this one and this one that point out that despite our American habits, a meat-based diet is not sustainable, and giving land and grain to livestock animals instead of humans is a wasteful process. Also, a huge percentage of people outside of the U.S. are lactose intolerant, and animals need veterinary resources which are often not available in poor countries. So it's potentially wasteful, and possibly harmful to both people and animals. I'm going to bring up these ideas and see what happens.
5. Fix up the back hallway as a mudroom. Last night Stanley and I purchased coat hooks, shelves, boot trays, and batteries for the studfinder, so there is now nothing stopping me from my goal of an adorable, organized entryway. Pictures to come, if I like how it looks.
6. Set up my new sewing machine. I wonder if I will ever use it. I sure hope sew. <----ha ha what a super excellent pun. I have sew many ideas for projects, and they would go sew much faster and washable if I could use a machine instead of doing it by hand. Here is a partial list.

• case for mini-tripod
• curtains for basement, kitchen, back entryway
• diapers and diaper covers
• table runner/table cloth
  
• removable pillow covers
• hats, mittens using old clothes
• baby clothes
• Christmas stockings
• fabric wall hanger with pockets to hold mail, keys, wallet, etc. Like this one.
• basket liners
• pajamas. So I can finally have long-enough sleeves and pantlegs and stop looking quite so silly in pajamas; I may just alter the ones I have by adding appropriate fabric.

7. Make cookie dough. Originally, this item was "make cookies", but despite the fact that I look forward to making them, it's not happening, so I'm lowering the bar. Lots of bar lowering these days. It's very satisfying. My plans for these cookies are to give them to our neighbors who have been delivering the paper for free (except they haven't done it for the last two days...hmmm....) and to the nurses in labor and delivery. If the cookies get too old before I go into labor, I'll eat them and make more. Yes, I would sacrifice myself and eat nearly stale cookies for the sake of the nurses. I would do that. I'm thinking of making cookies like these for the nurses, with maybe not that exact decoration, but something similar. What do you think? Cute? or borderline creepy?
Actually, I'm thinking, kind of creepy. Maybe I'll use a heart or star cutter with pink frosting. And I'll use my foot cookie cutter for some other, more appropriate event, like if a friend has foot surgery. Or if they catch Big Foot. So glad I've got that cookie cutter, just in case.