Sew...what do you think?

This week I broke out my sewing machine. We've owned it for almost 2 years now, and it's never been out of the box. I've never used a sewing machine before...so I decided to attack some items (the easiest items ever, which also happen to be baby items).

Some Bib & Burp Cloth sets with Sew On Snaps (they last longer and withstand tugging!)






A nursing cover. The strap is velcro and connects to the cover, and in the top of the cover between where the strap connects to the cover and where the velcro attaches is boning, so the front of the cover bows out when you use it--allowing you to see your baby, but not allowing everyone to see your boob. Win/win.



And, lastly, this is a 0-3 Month Pillowcase dress. It's supposedly "the perfect project for the beginner!" ...3 hrs, much cursing, and almost giving up many times...and the "perfect beginning project" was completed.


It's been fun...but I think I'm all sewn out for awhile!

It's Just over that Mountain!

(part of Writer's Workshop at Mama Kat's Losin' It!)

For as long as I can remember, my family has gone camping and boating at one specific lake about 5 hours from our house. It wasn't just our family--it was us, my uncles, my aunts, my grandparents, and all my cousins. As kids, we just couldn't get enough of the water, and hated when we had to come in for the night.



On one particular trip, we were down at the lake for a longer period of time than we usually stayed, so the decision was made to take a day off of boating and just hang around the campground. As a 10 year old, this did not exactly thrill me. So, some time around that afternoon, my cousin and I (who was also 10) were complaining about being bored. Our uncle pointed to a mountain in the distance and said "well then go to the lake, it's just right on the other side of that mountain!"

And we were off.

Several hours and at least 5 different "mountains" later, we still hadn't reached the lake. I'm sure it didn't help that we were forced to take our 8 year old cousin with us in her flipflops, either, but we eventually gave up and turned around.

If anyone ever tells me "it's just right over that mountain!" again? I'm not falling for it.

Lesson learned.

DIY Fabric Softener

I have seen this idea on so many blogs lately that I had to give it a go. It's so incredibly easy and really a $$ saver!

Ingredients:

6 cups HOT water
2 cups hair conditioner (any kind, any scent)
3 cups white vinegar
Big empty container

The ridiculously easy directions:
1. Stir the 6 cups HOT (seriously, make sure it's hot) water with the 2 cups of hair conditioner until the conditioner is completely desolved.


2. Mix in 3 cups white vinegar
3. Pour into container


I will mention that I used dry measure for all this...because my brain was not fully functional this evening. So, although it's probably a bit more for liquid measure, this made about 2/3 gallon for me. So let's look at the price breakdown (and I bought all this stuff at target, so it would be cheaper pretty much anywhere else, because I had to make a valentine's day run):

White Vinegar 16oz: $1.12, so would be $1.68 for liquid measure at 24oz.
Conditioner 22.5: $1.47, so 16oz of that would be about $1.07
Water: Free ;)

Total cost of about 85oz of fabric softener: $2.75, or $0.03/oz.
The fabric softener I buy is the Tide 44oz, which is on sale for $4.47 right now at walmart, making it about $0.10/oz, which would make 85oz of fabric softener bought $8.64.

Total savings: $.07/oz or $5.80/85oz.

We will talk about the fact that I'm frugal enough to make my own fabric softener, but willing to shell out $4.00 for a gallon of Arizona tea I could make myself later.

Also, I haven't used this yet, but I'm planning on using it with the cup from the last tide bottle I bought and using the same amount as I would have from the bottle based on the load. I'll let you know how it goes.

Adventures in Fostering

My husband and I have been fostering dogs for the past couple months, and have found that we really have a great love for it. Cleo is our only permanent dog and, as we live on base, we have a 2 animal limit--this has worked out well for us, because we can't keep any of our foster dogs or we can't foster anymore. Translation: our crazy house rules are keeping us from owning a billion dogs.

We are taking a little break from fostering because I'm in training with United Way for CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children), where I'll be working with foster children instead of foster dogs. While I'm in training, I don't have the kind of time needed to devote to a foster puppy. But, before too long, we'll be back at it!

So far we've had, and successfully adopted out, these puppies:

Blitzen, or "Blitz," a 4 month old Golden Retriever. Cleo had an absolute blast with him and, although he seemed a little too eager to get at other dogs while walking a the park, he was absolutely best friends with Cleo. He's a lover, a soft mouth, and a great dog!


Froggy, a 5 month old Puggle (Pug/Beagle mix). She was born and spent her entire 5 months of life in a shelter, where all her litter mates and mama were adopted. She is the most snuggly dog I've ever seen, and wanted nothing more but to curl up in your lap. When we first brought her home she hated Cleo and her insane energy, and actually got Cleo under her eye. By the end of her time here, she would play for a long time with Cleo before getting annoyed with her!


Lastly, meet Sofia--a 5ish month old German Shepherd mix. Sofia was abused, and spent the first two days here in her crate because she was terrified of everyone and everything. She would sit in there and growl at Cleo when she couldn't even see her, would have to be dragged from her crate to go outside, and as soon as we'd come back in she would run back into her crate and not leave. By the time she left here, she would come out of her crate for long periods of time and play GREAT with Cleo! She was doing so well! Here's a photo from one of her last couple days here:


And, of course, here's our 6 month old Cleo...because she's pretty awesome.

Extremely Loud

I saw this movie this weekend: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. I'm still not sure how I feel about it, as I understand the idea behind it but I'm really not fond of the storyline (who let's their little kid run around NYC by themselves all day going into homes of complete strangers?). But, either way, it got me thinking about 9/11.

9/11 sucked. I'm pretty sure there really isn't a better way to put that. Everything about wars and terrorism sucks. But, this particular event--9/11--sucks more than the rest of them just because it happened and I/we/my generation was there for it. There's always Pearl Harbor, all of WWI & WWII and other wars, numerous battles etc., and even the completely-non-war-related Titanic that were horrible events where so many people were killed. We hear about them, and read about them, and we know they sucked too. But, we weren't watching the news or reading the papers or listening to the radio when these things happened like we were for 9/11.

Instead the halls in our schools were very hush hush while non-descriptive "letters" were passed out to us and we were sent home early to empty houses where we then turned on the news alone and tried to make sense of what was happening. Was it a coincidence? Was it a terrorist attack? Where even ARE the twin towers? Do I know anyone there? Many of the news stories, at least for me, will be the things that stick around forever as memories. Especially the stories in the days that followed where loved ones cried out at the cameras waving flyers and pictures at the camera of their missing family members.

We weren't there to see the aftermath for the others.

And I think it makes us stronger as a generation.

Merry Christmas!

Here's a few images of Christmas in our house! The hubs is working all weekend, unfortunately, but we'll have a good 2 hour Christmas tomorrow :)





Cleo's just a little excited for her first Christmas :)

Not Even Sorry

I don't have much to say in this post. I have no pictures of this event, so I drew you a picture...



The other day we took Cleo and Blitz (who got adopted today! So we are back to a one doggy home!) to the park to see how Blitz did interacting with strangers, on a leash, etc. We walked him over to the playground to find some kids.

There were none.

So we played on the playground like the grown adults we are.

This "bucketseat" spinning contraption? Amazing. You propel yourself once, and then it spins you and you can't stop.

And if you're me, you laugh uncontrollably and nearly puke when you finally get up the balls to jump off the spinning death seat.

And then you're horribly embarrassed when a biker or 6 goes by.

Blitz!

As if things weren't crazy enough around here with our 5 month old nipping puppy, this week we added a foster pup to the mix!

Meet Blitzer...aka "Blitz" because we're really just too lazy to add on that extra syllable.


Blitz is a 4 month old that appears to be a fullbred golden retreiver. He is, however, absolutely going to be a GIANT dog. He's about twice the weight of Cleo, and younger than her. He's also much calmer, though, and he'll play with her but she wears him out long before she's out of energy.



But then they take adorable naps together, and it's all good.



We went to the park today and he met a dog a little smaller than Cleo, and snapped at her a little but wasn't exactly vicious, though. But he met our neighbors dogs and they have an akita mix and some kind of toy-sized mix, and he was fine with both of them. We're thinking it was just him being on the leash. He's not housetrained yet, either, but is much more well-mannered that Cleo (and we trained her!) and is completely cratetrained!

But, at the park together, we were also able to take a nice long walk ON the lake--which is a new experience for us, as our home state doesn't get cold enough for this. The pups enjoyed sliding around on the ice and I was frankly just fascinated with the ice fishers!



I have to take Blitz back to an adoption event on Saturday (Christmas Eve) and I'm definitely pimping this amazing puppy out! He's a great dog, and if we had a bigger house and he wasn't going to be a giant hairy beast when he grows up, we'd keep him! He definitely deserves a home for Christmas :)

Dear Santa

Part of Writer's Workshop at Mama's Losin' It!

Dear Santa,

I understand that you can't get me everything I want, and that's okay. I had my husband here for Thanksgiving and I know that means it's only fair he will work all day and night on Christmas--that's okay, I get it.

I appreciate you letting us go visit family just after Christmas. That's so nice of you.

But...what I really want for Christmas? Well, that's pretty easy.

I want this to stop biting me:



She's very cute. She's very smart. She's fairly well-behaved. However, I don't have that many dressy long sleeved shirts, and people look at me funny when I go to work with tiny cuts all over my hands and arms and I'm just waiting for someone to ask me if I need help. Plus, it hurts.

Now, I know Cleo is nipping because she's a puppy. I also know she's nipping because she's a herding breed. I know it's normal.

But it really hurts.

So, if you can't get her to stop nipping, can you at least let her lose her other three puppy canine teeth? They are definitely the biggest offenders.

Or at least hit me up with some great cover-up.

Thanks Santa.

Love,
Meg

Turk-ish Dreams

This year we hosted our very first Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving has never been a big deal for me, as I'm usually needed at work before 4am the next day, and my parents were always out of town growing up so it was never a huge family event for me.

But, this year, we are on the other side of the country from our families and I don't have a job that will fire me for not coming on Black Friday, so we got to have Thanksgiving! Out here there are several people that we actually know from our hometown--we always find this truth odd, since we currently live in the middle of nowhere--and we all got together to great a potluck dinner last night.

Although we had a full dinner and much more food than we needed, I only made the turkey, stuffing, and cranberry/apple mold (thanks for the recipe, Family Circle). I was very nervous about the turkey, since I had never made one, and despite it taking 1.5 hrs longer than it was supposed to, it tasted absolutely delicious and I wouldn't change a thing if/when I do it again!

I decided to stuff it with celery, carrots, an onion, and sage leaves just to keep it moist and flavorful. I have read that actually stuffing a turkey with stuffing is no longer considered good practice due to some bacteria that tends to grow between the stuffing and the turkey, so I decided against that.



I used a mixture of honey, butter, and dried herbs (sage, thyme, rosemary) to baste with, and took it out of the oven (where it was covered in foil) about every 45 minutes to rebaste. It took about 6.5 hours to fully cook, but it was great!




And I went cheap for the stuffing..stove top, approx. 10 minutes total to fix. Best idea ever.




So, our first Thanksgiving was a total success!

Hope everyone else had a great one too!