Author: Wendy

Sleeping All Night

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I’ve always been a big softy when it comes to my kids. I know in some cases it’s not healthy for them or me, but it’s hard to change…

The most recent instance of this is the fact that Small Fry, even though he’s 9 months old now, still hasn’t been sleeping through the night. And let me tell you, 9 months of not getting a full night’s sleep is hard on the mama!

Our old apartment was only a 2 bedroom, so we put him in our room when he was born; when we moved, we kept him with us even though we have more bedrooms now. Hubby felt it was more important for me to have a sewing room than for baby to have his own room. What that meant for me was that I got up with Small Fry every time he fussed all night long because I didn’t want hubby’s sleep to be (too) interrupted. Having a baby scream for even 15 minutes in the middle of the night wouldn’t be pleasant for him. Of course, it wasn’t pleasant for me, either, but I didn’t have to work during the days. What I didn’t take into account was that to be an effective teacher for Seahawk and Munchkin, I needed sleep too.

Well, yesterday, hubby had had enough. He was tired (no pun intended) of having a cranky wife in the mornings. So he dropped the mattress in the crib and moved it to the living room. It’s just there temporarily while we train Small Fry to put himself back to sleep instead of nursing throughout the night.

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Last night was the first time we made him “cry it out,” and it was a raging success. He cried for about 10 minutes around 1 a.m. and (apparently) for under a minute a couple of other times. I was blissfully unaware of those other times :).

Here’s hoping the rest of the week is a smooth as last night and all he needed was for me to leave him alone during the night.

–Wendy

Northwest Quilt Expo

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As promised, I’m talking about the quilt show we went to last weekend. There were hundreds of quilts on display and dozens of vendors. A quilter’s dream :).

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We started and ended with vendors simply because of the way the place was laid out. This was the most memorable shop of them all. If you look carefully, you’ll see that each of the three appliques are a single piece. Typically, an applique is multiple pieces of different fabrics (like the Sunbonnet Sues I’m making and will share another day). Because this technique struck me as so different, I snapped a picture of her “how-to” and of an example. This pic is the example one.

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I noticed that owls were a common theme throughout several quilts. This made me reflect on my late grandmother (she passed away less than a year after I got married, long before I had kids). She was an avid quilter and also a collector of owls. Seeing the owl quilts and remembering her love of the night birds made me wonder if owl lovers also tend to be quilters or the other way round. Or if it’s just coincidence.

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Hubby and I were struck by the simplicity of this one. Very little color, as it’s mostly white, but very beautiful all the same.

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This one was Munchkin’s favorite quilt. He really liked the dragons. I’m not sure it was my favorite, but I did really like it.

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Both of the older kids got to have a lesson in yarn making. This woman was so nice to teach them. And she let them keep the piece of yarn that they made as well as a piece of “raw” wool to compare what they started with to what they ended up with.

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This one was neat. I liked the reflection of the buildings in the water. Upon closer look, you could see that it was accomplished not only with different fabrics but also by layering a kind of netting material over the lower half to mute the colors further.

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I loved the decorative stitching on this one. And the colors :).

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Here’s Seahawk with the block he designed. You’ll recall that Munchkin’s was Picture of the Week last Friday.

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The kids also got to learn the proper technique for tying a quilt (as opposed to sewing the layers together). That’s something I’ve never learned. And I spent the time they were doing that feeding Small Fry, so I still don’t know how!

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These two were very similar in their construction: both were composed of hundreds of tiny (probably 2×2 or 3×3 inch) squares. The red and yellow one was hubby’s favorite of the day and my second favorite. If I remember correctly, it was the blue ribbon winner in the pieced quilt category. Rightly so!

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These are just several that caught my eye, in no particular order.

And finally, my favorite:

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Look carefully and you’ll see carrots and a beet under the ground (that’s my favorite feature of this quilt) and all sorts of other features that cross the framing barriers.

Which one is your favorite?

–Wendy

Picture of the Week

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We went to the annual Northwest Quilters’ Expo last weekend in Portland. No one but me was looking forward to it, but once we got in there everyone had a lot of fun. The quilts were absolutely stunning – I’ll try to remember to do a full post on them next week. One of the activities they had for kids was to design their own quilt block. After the expo, they were going to be sending all the blocks to seamstresses to piece them together and turn them into a (or many, I’m not sure) quilt for underpriveleged children in the area. This is Munchkin with his block.

As a side note, this picture was the first time I used the Snapseed app on my phone. Here’s the original picture:

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What do you think? Did I make it better or mess it up?

–Wendy

P.S. This post is completely from my phone; I wasn’t able to go into hubby’s office this week to use the computer to prep my posts. That’s why I don’t have my usual graphic signature today.

Make Your Own Wrapping Paper

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My nephew had a birthday earlier this month, and in our quest for simplicity, I didn’t want to buy wrapping paper or even a gift bag. It seems silly to me to spend money on something that’s going to get torn up and thrown away. So what I did instead was found some stamps at Goodwill for 49 cents and bought an inkpad from the Dollar Tree

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and stamped all over a piece of the brown shipping paper I had left over from making the kids’ human body diagrams.

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To take the simplicity one step further, you could totally do this with a paper grocery bag if your gift is small enough. Then, once you have your stamps and ink, you could always have free wrapping paper (just buy a few groceries first ;)). Score!

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Fresh Rosemary

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One of my very favorite things about our new house is the rosemary bush in the front yard. My sister-in-law planted it when she and my brother lived here (her father is our landlord), and I can’t thank her enough! Not only is it pretty, but it’s very practical. Whenever I’m making an Italian sauce, I just send the kids out to clip a sprig. It’s fabulous. And fresh rosemary doesn’t take nearly as long to cook in a sauce as dried rosemary does, so that’s another big benefit. I hate hard rosemary in my spaghetti sauce.

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What’s your favorite herb? To be perfectly honest, rosemary isn’t mine; thyme is. But I don’t have a thyme plant in my yard ;).

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Pretty

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We were out walking the other day, after picking up the kids from “Club Mud” (the pottery class they go to every Tuesday – more on that in a future post), and I just couldn’t resist taking a picture of this dogwood tree. I thought it was absolutely stunning in full bloom.

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Spring is here!

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Homemade Baby Food

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Hello everyone! Today I have something that may or may not apply to you, but it’s what I’ve got :).

About five months ago, when we moved out of the apartment and into the house, I started reading more blogs, and with the information I’ve gleaned from sites like this, this, and this, I decided to really embrace my housewife/stay-at-home-mom status. Seahawk is 9 now, and I’ve spent most of his life as a non-working mom. The difference between that and a stay at home mom is the amount of time spent on the house and kids. I’m sorry to say that I was quite selfish for a while, especially during my 2-year writing stint. It doesn’t do any good to dwell on the past, so I’m not going to. Instead, I’m going to look to the future and continue to be the wife and mom God intends me to be.

What does that mean for today’s post? I’m glad you asked :). Part of being a better mom (to me) means providing a healthier existence for my family, from homemade laundry soap (to avoid chemicals) and cloth diapers (to save the family money, as well as being environmentally friendly), to homemade baby food for Small Fry. The latter is what I’m going to talk about today (duh).

It’s really easy to make baby food, and less expensive than the jars or plastic tubs. Not to mention, there’s virtually no garbage associated with it. That last item alone is worth it to me. Well, that and the fact that I can use organic fruits and vegetables and control the ingredients used.

So, here’s what you do. First, peel (if necessary) your fruit or vegetable:

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I made this on Monday and was using organic sweet potatoes (or yams, I’m not sure; I don’t like either, so I don’t usually buy them). After peeling them, I was left with a nice pile for our compost :).

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Next, cut it into smallish chunks and place in your steamer basket. Add enough water that it won’t all boil off and burn during the cooking process – I speak from experience on this!

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Steam the food until it’s fork-tender. These sweet potatoes took about 15 minutes. You can kind of tell from the picture that they changed color from a dull orange to a nice bright one:

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In stages, so as not to overwhelm your blender (unless yours is better than mine and can handle it), puree the chunks until they’re the consistency you want. If you need to add liquid, use what’s left from your steamer; that way, you’re adding any nutrients that were lost in the cooking process back in. One word of advice, though: make the baby food thicker than you think you’ll need. You can always thin it out by adding breast milk, formula, or water when you feed it to your baby. By leaving it thicker, you’re prepared in case your baby advances to ‘heavier’ foods while this is frozen.

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When it’s all pureed, put it into ice cube trays and freeze.

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My three potatoes made more than enough to fill the two trays I have designated for baby food, so I just put the leftovers into Small Fry’s normal feeding jar and didn’t have to worry about thawing food for two days.

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That’s it! Well, actually, there is one more step, but I forgot to take a picture, and that is to move the cubes to a ziploc freezer bag once they’re frozen. Thaw the food as needed for feeding your baby. A really young baby will probably only need one cube per feeding; Small Fry will be 9 months tomorrow and he’s up to 2, sometimes 3.

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Picture of the Week

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This was Monday, and I’ve been looking forward to today’s post all week so I could share this with you guys! Seahawk isn’t really sleeping, but Small Fry is. Using the  song from Wednesday’s post, Seahawk cuddled his baby brother to sleep. He was so proud of himself!

Have a fabulous weekend!

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Balloon Creations

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Is there an Old Spaghetti Factory near you? Have you ever been there? There’s one not too far from us (the original one, actually), and we go there sometimes. They have amazing food and much more affordable prices than Olive Garden (although we indulge there too, sometimes; we all have a weakness for good pasta). At the one in Portland, if you go on a Friday or Saturday night, there’s a guy who wanders from table to table making balloon creations for anyone who wants one (not just kids). He’s absolutely amazing and super friendly, so we always let each kid get one (a small one, though – there are 5 of us and our car is an early 90’s Toyota Celica; there’s not much room in there for “stuff”) and tip the guy. (He’s self-employed, not part of OSF at all, so tips are all he gets on those nights.)

Here’s what the kids got when we were there last week.

Munchkin chose a train, and we were all pretty awed by this:

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Seahawk chose a dinosaur. The kids’ favorite part of this was that the guy “kept a Sharpie in his pocket for drawing on them!” with.

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A secret about me: I could never do these. I’m always too afraid the balloon will pop. Knowing that the balloons are designed to be twisted and manipulated this way provides me no comfort!

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Calming a Cranky Baby

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Every baby is different. There’s no doubt about that. Small Fry is not the same as either of his brothers were. Or maybe it’s just that hubby and I are different people since he’s a bit of a gap baby. Who knows?

In general, he’s a pretty happy baby, but like all of us, he has his moments – usually when he’s not had a good nap. There are times during those tantrums (for lack of a better word) that I’m not available to comfort him. Since I’m still his favorite person, this can pose a problem for the rest of the family. So we’ve found something that’s almost as good as me: this song.

9 times out of 10, this will calm him down. It’s not strictly limited to this particular song; anything Leigh Nash sings has a calming effect on him. I think he has a baby crush on her ;). But this one definitely seems to be his favorite.