Saturday, March 31, 2012

March post

Hello gentle readers! Let me apologize to you all for my long absence and reassure you that I am in fact quite alive. As always seems to happen, I get busy or sick and can't manage more than one post a month. At least I'm consistent! On the bright side, you will all be happy to know that both my doctor and I got sick of the constant sinus infections after the last one and I went for a CT of the sinuses. Turns out I have chronic sinusitis. My doctor looked at my scan and pronounced it "the most jacked up" she had ever seen. She's a cool doctor-I heart her. Every single area of the sinuses that should be all black on the CT is grey with the tiniest sliver of black. Yay me! I saw an ENT doctor this week and he said I'm a good candidate for a balloon sinuplasty so I'm set up for that April 23rd and Josh is looking forward to seeing it all go down. The nice thing is the procedure is with local anesthesia, is done in office, and only takes 30 minutes so my recovery time should be about a day. If it doesn't work, I still have the sinus surgery option as a backup but this is less invasive. I'm hopful that it will give me some relief and make me not have constant sinus infections. The housework I'm sure will be thankful as well.

I find it rather hard to catch up on a month's worth of activity but luckily we are boring people so it can't be that hard, right?

I went to a stamp camp and as my snack I baked a rainbow cake. I found the directions on a lovely blog that I recently discovered called Bird on a Cake. Linky here. It was surprisingly easy and impressed everyone. I think next time I'm going to make the cake from scratch though. I'm not a fan of box mixes. It basically involves separating the mix into six parts and dyeing each a different color. You start pouring progressively less of each color into the center of the first pan and then flip the color order in the other.
pouring the batter
Note the nice new cake pans! I found some really nice ones that are made in the USA out of recycled steel. They are fabulous!
yay cake pans
We enjoyed the piece that had to be taken out to level the top. It's sitting in our other new acquisition.
have to level the top
I bought a frying pan when Josh and I moved in together that we have had for a long time at this point. It is used almost daily and was showing some serious signs of wear. When I went looking for cake pans I came across this lovely ceramic skillet that has a finish that is non-toxic and it is crazy light. I loved that it was a green solution to our pan dilemma. The bonus is it basically requires no oil to cook things. The white interior also makes it easier to see when food is done.
Anyway-back to the cake. Finished it looked like this:
rainbow cake decorated
I've been trying to improve my cake and cupcake baking skills so that I can make good stuff when Maegwin is ready to have parties. I also made some fishy cupcakes for Maegwin's St. Patty's day party at school which were a big hit.
fishie cupcakes
Just FYI though, it is crazy hard to find circus peanuts now. Who knew! I had to search like three stores and I only was able to procure one bag so the fish didn't have as many fins as I wanted. I'm hoping to make some chickie cupcakes for Easter.

Luckily being sick doesn't slow me down on the knitting front! I have been zooming along on quite a few different projects. I've got one Swedish Fish sock done. This is a Spilly Jane pattern and if you are a knitter and haven't checked her stuff out, do it. She makes really fun whimsical colorwork patterns and even I, a novice at best with Fair Isle knitting, am able to do them.
fish sock one
I used two colors of Spud & Chloe Fine sock yarn and I really like working with it. It seems springy and feels like it will hold up well to wear.
I also have completed one sock for Maegwin and was working my way down the foot of the second one before the fancy struck me to blog.
toddler sock 1
The pattern is King Me from the Petite Purls website. Their stuff is cute and free and I love it. The yarn is Knit Picks Simple Stripes which is discontinued now but I like it. I'll probably still have a half ball when I finish these so I might make a few spares for the inevitable missing baby sock to not slow us down.
The last thing I've finished recently is this cardigan worn by Maegwin in today's egg hunt.
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It's Tiny Tea Leaves and I originally made it short sleeved because we had a weird heat wave of 80 degree weather last week and I feared that spring like winter would skip us altogether and she wouldn't even be able to wear the sweater. Of course, today was 41 degrees so we only took her coat off for a few quick shots then put it back on her. sigh.

The egg hunt went well though again no one from Maegwin's class showed up so we still didn't meet any parents of kids her age. I don't understand what the deal is. Oh well. She was definitely more into it this year than last and ran from egg to egg quickly scooping them up.
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It was hard to get a clear shot since she was half running around and squealing happily.
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She stopped a few times to dump her bag out into another one because it doesn't really have a ton of room. I did this on purpose so we can give her some candy but even full it won't be a ridiculous amount.
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She crawled behind and under bushes and let nothing stop her.
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Even the cold only made her come and snuggle for a minute. She loosed a mighty battle cry of "EGGIES!!" and continued.
it's cold but I'm pressing on
This little girl kept standing in front of an egg but seemed totally disinterested in picking it up. Maegwin hovered in front of her for a while before the girl's dad finally told Maegwin to take the egg. It was funny to watch.
stealing other kids eggs
She was thorough and even checked inside the caterpillar.
none in the caterpillar
Then we headed in to empty them out and check the loot.
heading in
Just tootsie rolls and Hershey Kisses but it was a good time.
checking eggs

She fell asleep on me after we ran a ton of errands. I wrapped her up in her new quilt and it reminded me of Dune. Worm sign, we have worm sign!
mmm shai-hulud

Other than that, the other two big pieces of news are that I changed jobs and that we bought a riding mower. The job thing is just a lateral move within my company so really not that big of a piece of news. The hours are better though-well they will be once they back fill me...We are psyched about the mower though! So nice to not have to push mow our crazy big yard and now we can help our neighbors out who helped us mow. It should be delivered tomorrow so we're going to fire that up as soon as we get it.

2 comments:

  1. The best picture is that last one! She's amazingly cute. We've got to get together for another play date, Emma was asking about her the other day.

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  2. I love Maegwin's pigtails -- she's super adorable and I miss her a lot! Thanks for the update and Happy Easter! Love to all, California Mom

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