So I’m complaining about the man socks when I really shouldn’t. The man has been insanely patient about the whole thing. Like years patient. Last night I had a moment of inspiration and I charted out a pattern. Which I think will be perfect. For boy socks. The man might have to wait longer.

But it’s nice yarn, no? I traded Kimber some very lovely pink Miss Babs for this yarn, which is quite manly and quite perfect for my man, who may never get a hand-knit pair of socks. The colorway is even manly – Brewhouse Ale. A quite nice merino/nylon blend from Cables and Lace.

Oh and by the by – the cowl did not get published today. Whoever said it’s always sunny in Jacksonville must have been smoking something. It was a very grey day.  But I’m hoping tomorrow will be better!

So I did all the morning crazy-ness. I got up early, I fixed lunches for all my menfolk. I cooked breakfast. Everyone went off to school looking neat and nice. I of course drove the boys to school with crazy hair and dark circles under my eyes. The people in the school office must be used to it by now. I very rarely put myself together anymore. Must remedy that. No one takes the woman with crazy hair and a wild look in her naked eye seriously.

And then I realized it was February. February and I don’t get along. February brings me broken arms, and crazy high temperatures, and all manner of bad stuff. But this year will be different. I will make friends with February. Friends I tell you.

I started the South Beach Diet this morning to try to take off some extra poundage. After I took the boys to school I came home and did some business stuff and have begun the process of making myself look human. Makeup is next. I’m cleaning the house and running numbers and I’m telling February in no uncertain terms that good things will happen this month.

We’re planning a Disney trip mid-February. That will be good. And the boys will start basketball practice this week. That will be good. Little J is loving his guitar lessons and Big J is still doing well with trumpet. Also good.

And I’ve raised nearly $1000 for Doctors Without Borders with my Help for Haiti campaign via Ravelry. I am giving 50% of pattern sales. The end date for this was originally yesterday. But less than $1000 – $925 and change is such an unsatisfying number. Really. We can do better. I want to break that $1000 mark. So I’m extending the contributions until February 14th. So we can send that organization a lot of love!

So if you have any PicnicKnits patterns on your to-do list, now is the time to buy. It’s my offering to February, so that it will stop kicking me in the arse.

We had interesting ideas for Halloween this year. A whole theme with ninjas, and a geisha, and a samurai. But the man’s work got in the way, so the grand plans we had were never executed. So we went a different direction. The ninjas (a normal one and a deadpool one) were already ready to go. But we had a Halloween party at 6pm and it was 11am. Go time!

The man’s costume was easy. But mine required a lot of spray paint…

And some beads and some yarn (which naturally I have a ton of)…

And some cotton and a glue gun and some more spray paint…

And et voila!

I love the way you can see how the boys are smiling in their eyes. And Marge would not be complete without her Homer…

I love the beer can he made up. Actually the man did 90% of our costumes. All I did was sew the tube dress for myself and do our makeup. And if you kids want to do this at home, it’s really easy. The shoes were just old ballet flats. The necklace was 25mm wooden beads (19 of them) strung on yarn and spray painted red. The dress just green t-shirt fabric (from the clearance at Jo-Ann’s) sewn into an A-line tube dress and held up with clear elastic around my neck. I made it tight around the chest so it would stretch and stay on. The hair is a small Halloween bucket that fit my head. The man added a tube of cardboard, which he secured with duct tape. He spray painted the headform blue and then hot glued on a million cotton balls. (Seriously, we used 2.5 bags of triple size cotton balls). Then he spray painted the cotton balls blue. The makeup was hard. We didn’t want to spend a fortune on yellow makeup. So we dusted ourselves with yellow eyeshadow. I added the lines to his head in black eyeliner, and colored his normally grey goatee (which he trimmed short) with brown eyeshadow.

Add some mixed drinks and you have a happy Halloween!

Inspired by Waltz In Exile I thought I would share a typical morning around here. What? If you can’t think of your own blog fodder, steal someone else’s. Right? Our evenings are not nearly as hectic as our mornings though, so here’s a typical school morning for you.

6:00 AM – My alarm clock buzzes. Smack it. Hard. Sleep for 9 more minutes.

6:09 AM – Repeat above.

6:18 AM – Repeat above.

6:27 AM – Holy hashbrowns! Drag my arse out of bed and stumble to the bathroom. Do a quick e-mail check and open the door to the boys’ room. Threaten to turn on the light.

6:33 AM – After 6 minutes of “get out of beds” complete with cheesy song* to try to ensure good moods of said boys, turn on the light. Cover ears to block out the sound of screaming. “The light! It burns!” You would think they were vampires.

6:40 AM – Lay out breakfast and start packing lunch. Try to convince boy #2 that cold chicken orzo casserole will not be a tasty lunch, but figure it’s not worth it and give up. Ask boy #1 seventeen times what sort of sandwich he wants.  Man is out of bed, so start making man’s breakfast.

6:53 AM – Holler at boys who have done nothing buy lie on the couch and curse the light. Try to get some form of food in them before they are off to face the day.

7:00 AM – Steer boys towards clothing. That they did not lie out the night before. Again. Now they wear uniforms, so it shouldn’t be that danged hard, but it takes them 20 minutes to find a shirt and pants, and we don’t have 20 minutes to spare.

7:05 AM – Finish packing man’s lunch. Leave lunchbag open because man will repack said lunch, rearrange it, add or take away ice packs, and generally try to control said lunch in some fashion.

7:07 AM – “Leaving in 13 minutes!” Call out the to-do list to boys who are now mostly dressed.  “Teeth & pits! Teeth & pits! No one wants to be around a boy with BO and bad breath!”

7:08 AM – Watch man take everything out of his lunch box, grab a different lunch box, and completely re-pack it. Did not yell at man or mock him because he put the other lunchbox away.

7:17 AM – Have finally dressed myself and now go to stinky boys to make sure they actually did their teeth and pits. Take pathetic dog outside. Pathetic dog refuses to go on the grass because there is dew. Pathetic dog is crated until after boy drop off so pathetic dog does not pee on carpet.

7:27 AM – Leave house 7 minutes late. Referee the shotgun wars that ensue the moment we step out of the house. I swear to all that is Holy I’m gonna either write up a shotgun calendar or call no shotgun for the rest of eternity.

7:35 AM – Arrive at school, drop off boys, and bemoan the fact that there is no time for a nap today. Wondering if you can actually get caffeine poisoning.

The good news of the morning is that after I dropped off the boys, I took the pins out of this and got a nice full length shot of it. Once I do the beauty shots and the final pattern edit, it will be up for sale!

*Cheesy song - “Get up you sleepy head. Haul your hiney out of bed. Motivate your motor head, and haul your hiney out of bed.”

I’ve been feeling overly domestic lately. Baking lots of bread, lots of home cooked meals and new recipes. I’m blaming it on fall, but it’s hard to say. I got a breadmaker for $3.50 the other day at the thrift store. I’ve been using it like crazy. I got the manual for it online and everything is working perfectly. It’s awesome!

This bread below however, did *not* come from a breadmaker. This is the basic boule recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day. And it really is that fast. The dough mixes up in no time. There is no kneading. Let me say that again – there is NO kneading. You keep the dough in the fridge and just break off a piece, let it rise and then bake it. Delicious!

In the knitting world, I finished my new shawl pattern that has been named Argante.  I bound off tonight (all 2 stitches of it!) and will soak it in a few minutes for blocking. The shaping came out perfectly – you can see how nicely the short-row method I used looks in the picture below. Can’t wait to see what this beauty blocks out like!

Oh and speaking of bees, I have a joke for ya. What kind of bees give milk? Wait for it…. Boobies!

I have to say I am overwhelmed and so grateful for the positive response to the Gaenor pattern. I loved making it, and I’m touched that so many people have fallen in love with it as well. Thank you!

We finally finished up boy birthdays this past weekend. The boys’ birthday are 5 weeks apart, so we normally do some sort of celebration together. This year we took some friends to see 9 and then we came back to the house for video games, and video games, and video games, and oh yes, some outside nerf dart wars, and ice cream and cake. Small turnout, but we had fun.

The cake was gator style, obviously. My boys have become quite the gator fans. I guess it is inevitable living here. This my friends was the first store bought cake I have EVER served for a birthday. Ever. I ran out of time this week due to some poor planning on my part, and opted to buy a cake instead of make cupcakes. I can live with this decision because I made them real cakes on their actual birthdays.

Anyhow we had a nice time. The last birthday guest didn’t leave til nearly 10pm, so we must have done something right. In other news, aka the weird world that I live in, this is what my 11 year old does when he gets his hands on the etch a sketch. Yeah. I can’t even write my own name with the blasted thing! (Do you see the skull on the sail? I mean really!)

I am a master procrastinator. Seriously. Always have been. Even before the internet. But today I will use the internet for good. I will put on some cheesy music (thanks to Pandora) and I will clean the house 15 minutes at a time (ala Flylady). Then I will pull up some old Buffy episodes on Hulu and re-organize the office. For reals. I’m even gonna throw stuff out because this room is overflowing with stuff and junk.

While I’m cleaning I leave you with an amusing picture. I finally went out on the boat on Sunday night with the menfolk and thought I would shoot one of those cute pictures of me and the man. We look kind of cute don’t we? But not nearly as cute as the pop-up boy who was sitting in the back of the boat. Love that boy.

I adore my boys. Truth be told, I don’t think I’m cut out for girls. But that’s why I’m glad some of my friends have girls – it gives me some girly time, and a chance to buy girly presents.

A young friend who calls me Aunt Corrina (which I love!!!!) turned eight. And this is someone who has a highly developed sense of style. Someone who is in her first year of private school, and now has to wear uniforms. Talk about squashing the spirit. But the one thing they can choose is their hair ribbons and barrettes. So I set out today for some sort of art kit so she could make her own.

There aren’t any. Not that I could find anyway.

So we kicked it old school. Old, old school. Like back in my day. When I was eight. And I got her all the supplies to make my favorite barrettes when I was her age. Oh I wish I had gotten some pictures of the kit. But we had the dentist today and too much running around. But I got her a little bin to hold the ribbons, the bar-style barrettes, and the beads. Now if you’re anywhere near my age you know where I’m going here. Fortunately I did get a picture of the finished product.

Makes you wish you were eight again, doesn’t it?

So today I’m sick. And in between general house tidying, shuttling the boys to and fro, making dinner, and oh yeah, all the other normal things I do in a day, I’ve been sitting on my bahookie. Because the being up leads to sometimes the head moving which leads to the woozy which leads to the bad. So when I could I stayed in my chair. I didn’t want to sleep because then I wouldn’t sleep at night. Which is why I was online when the lovely Kris of Sonny & Shear linked this particular treasure on facebook.

So I spent the better part of my day researching this interesting little phenomenon.  Apparently these lovely folks have a lot that is actually a tidge smaller than ours, but last year they reaped 6000 pounds of food. Now granted they have chickens and goats, which are sadly illegal in city limits here. But even if I made a serious effort to just produce fruits and veggies – well I could make a difference, couldn’t I? You know I really believe I could. In our lives, our health, and tiny babysteps to help the environment.

These were harvested from our pathetic little garden beds today. I admit that a lot of the pathetic-ness of the situation is my fault. I do not have a green thumb. I tend to kill plants, so I avoid helping with the gardening. But the fact of the matter is I’m home. I can garden. And it would be a good thing. So I’m gonna buckle down and do it.

Fortunately I live in Florida. Where the growing season is kind of non-stop. There is always something that can be planted. And I got a bit overwhelmed today thinking about canning and freezing and bumper crops. But then I realized, I have to grow the stuff first. I can learn the rest of it along the way. Stay tuned for what I hope will be a continuing series on this little adventure.

Ever since we moved to Florida my hair has been changing. It used to be stick straight, but it’s been slowly transforming to what can only be described as wavy hair. I used to be able to smooth it out pretty easily, but it’s starting to get harder and harder to do. So I thought I would try something entirely different.

I am embracing my wavy gravy hair. I’m using some of the curly girl methods – washing with conditioner instead of shampoo, and doing this really crazy method of drying it wrapped up in an old t-shirt. So far, so interesting. Basically what I’m looking for is having “done” hair without having to mangle it with the blowdryer and a curling iron all of the time.

In other news, the boys have captured a new pet. Meet Dart. So named because apparently he is quick. Dart eats crickets. I am squicked out by this, but I am trying to be a good mom of boys.

And finally, after the worst experiences ever (in person and on the phone) with a local pediatric dentist we are finally getting things fixed for the little dude. Seriously, I have never come across such unprofessional treatment in my life. Just awful. But the little dude likes our regular dentist and they were able to work out an alternate treatment plan for him. God bless our regular dentist and a pox on the lying twits who work at the pediatric office. Harumph.