Happy New Year - 2011

To family and friends - we love you all! Be safe and joyful in 2011.

I've started a new blog project for this year. I'll still be updating here with friends and family fun times, but if you'd like to know what's happening in chitknit's world, check out unravelingthestash.com.

The first post went live tonight, and it will be a yearlong project. More on it later. For now - it's bedtime.

As one of my Facebook friends said, "Midnight used to be the starting point. Now it's the end point."

Getting old is hell, ain't it?

Thanks to Betsy for a great dinner tonight, along with Adam's awesome chocolate fondue and homemade popcorn.

Long time no blog

I haven't written a blog post in more than three months. I know that because they last post I wrote was the start of the 90-Day Weight Loss Challenge at Lifetime, and the final weigh-in for said challenge was two weeks ago. (I lost 7 pounds, for those of you keeping score.)

A few weeks ago, it seemed like everyone I saw said "Hey, so, you, uh, ever gonna update that blog of yours again?"

I won't bore you to death with all of the reasons for the lack of blogging. Just know that, I'll try to do better. I suppose I just haven't felt like anything exciting enough to share has been happening lately, so I've been quiet. School's been really tough, and really busy this semester. Lots of things happened right there at the beginning that made it a hard start to the year.

But, here we are, two school days away from Thanksgiving, and things are going well. I've even gotten in some quality knitting AND reading time lately.

Speaking of reading, if you haven't read the "Hunger Games" books by Suzanne Collins, run, don't walk out to the bookstore and find yourself a copy. They are super fast reads (young adult novels), and once you start them, you won't be able to put them down.

I'd been hearing that from many friends, so I got on the hold list at the library. Only problem was, I was 163rd in line, and there were almost 100 people AFTER me. Luckily, some work friends had copies of the books, so I was able to borrow from them, instead of waiting three years for the library copies to be available.

•••

Hubs and I are having the fam over for Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday. I'm making a pumpkin pie from scratch. Stay tuned - I'm sure THAT will turn into a blog post. I'll shoot some really high quality food photos...

Good and good for you

I haven't written very much about the garden this summer. Last summer I posted about it all the time. I guess it's not "new and exciting" in this year two, so I don't really think about it.

The tomatoes are finally starting to come in, too, but they were so good we ate them before I took the photo above.

Last night, Adam made tilapia with zucchini, tomatoes and jalapenos, with quinoa. It's awesome to cook something when more than half of the ingredients came out of our own ground. It was delicious.

For the fourth of July, I made Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread. The consistency was more like cake than bread, and it is really good with milk. Zucchini seems to be the one thing we always have a million pounds of, so it's nice to have different options for cooking it up.

I'd like to go see what's out there this morning, but since it rained heavily yesterday, I'd be up to my knees in mud, I think. I'll let it dry out today then head out tonight to harvest a little more.

We're using grass clippings between rows to keep the weeds down. It really does seems to be helping. There are a few things popping up here and there, but they are easy to pull. It's not like weedy grass is growing between the rows.

Last week, Adam made two different green beans dishes, and we froze a couple of bags. It took me about 90 minutes to pick beans from the entire row, and I had two full plastic grocery bags of beans. They are very tasty, and they freeze easily.

A knitting progress report

One of my goals for 2010, as reported at the first of the year:

Keep knitting. And trying new and different patterns. Work through the yarn stash. Knit up what I already have, and then I can get new fun yarn. Maybe I'll start knitting things and randomly sending them to people I know...Who knows.

Since then, I've worked on a handful of projects. I completed a hat for Adam and below, you can see the matching scarf I'm working on. I've made a lot of progress, but it's just ribbing, and requires lots of weaving in ends because of the striping. Because of all that, I've taken small breaks from the scarf for other projects.


I'm participating in a sock KAL (knit along) that my mom told me about. I've knit A sock before, so this helps me meet the goal of trying something different. I've never done a KAL before, and I'm hoping that because I'm doing it with a bunch of other people, I'll actually get a PAIR of socks knit by the end of this project.

It's fun because we get new instructions on Friday afternoons. I get an easily digestible knitting assignment for each weekend.

In other KAL news, I also tried this dishcloth KAL from Rachel's Knitting Corner. She gives a washcloth knit along on the third week of each month, and you knit just a few rows a day. Again, a good excuse to sit down and do just a little bit of knitting each night.

I just finished it tonight. Needs to be blocked, as you can probably see. I used two colors of Sugar and Cream 100 percent cotton yarn. It's my go-to dishcloth yarn. I don't usually use more than one color of yarn, so again I was able to work on my goal of trying new knitting techniques. It was actually pretty easy to carry the two colors along the edge.

I've got a few more rows to do on the sock in the next few days, then I need to get back to work on Adam's scarf. I'd like to finish it within the next week or so.

In recent knitting news

Observant readers of this blog might recognize these arm warmers, though it's been about 15 months since they were last posted on the blog. Back then, I had finished the first one and started the second. The student in knitting club at school had seamed the first one for me, because she's an awesome seamstress.

Then, I finished knitting the second, but set it aside because I didn't want to have to seam it. I love knitting, but I hate seaming - probably because I'm not very good at it. The pattern, from "One Skein" by Leigh Radford, is pretty simple, but they do take a while since the yarn is lightweight and the needles are small.

Since we've been out of school the last few days, and it's super cold outside and in here, I decided it was high time to seam the second one so I could wear them while knitting and working on the computer. So glad I did. Thanks to Hubs for shooting this photo (in which you can see I'm wearing our Snuggie...)

Adam gave me a 2010 Knitting calendar for Christmas, and he picked this striped alpiner hat pattern out. It was a very quick project - just took about two days. The pattern calls for it to be knit flat and seamed up the back, so another one I had to challenge myself with.

I knit this with Bernat Baby Alpaca yarn, which feels delicious. And, bonus: it was on sale two for $5 at Michael's the day after New Year's. I will most likely be buying more of that yarn soon. You might notice the crochet edging around the bottom of the hat (the white part). This was a good project because it forced me to exercise a few different skills.

I'm working on this matching scarf. The color in the photo is a little funky, it was just a quick iPhone pic to post on Twitter. It's looking great so far, but will require lots of end-weaving-in because of the stripes. I can't wait to get a photo of Adam modeling both pieces once they're finished. Stay tuned.

2010 - No hovercrafts or robot maids, but still all good

Happy New Year, friends!

I've done resolutions in the past, and it seems I never accomplish them (short attention span, I think). So, my "resolutions" this year will be more in the form of goals.

Blog more. I noticed that in 2007, when I started this blog, I posted 217 times. In 2008, 234 times. In 2009, after I discovered Twitter - 49 times. Sad, sad, sad.

All that tweeting and time wasted playing Bejewled on Facebook seriously handicapped my blogging. The whole point of starting this blog was to get me writing every day. I always tell my students, the more you write, the better you get at it, just like playing an instrument or a sport. Based on my blogging performance in the last year, I'd say I'm a bad influence.

I'd like to say that I'll post to Betsy's photo blog (I have to call it Betsy's because I haven't posted on it since, oh, last summer), but I know that I'm overextended in cyberspace. I cannot commit to two blogs, tweeting, Facebook, and e-mail. It's probably because I have that silly little thing called a real job...

Keep the e-mail inbox under control. I have a bad habit of not deleting e-mail as I read it, or not saving what I need from it and getting rid of the rest. Just in my g-mail inbox, there were 2,300 messages on Dec. 30. With a little bit of work yesterday (interrupted by sledding) and some work today, I've culled it down to fewer than 800. I will get it cleaned out today. I should do the same with the work inbox as well. It's overwhelming to have all that "junk" always there.

I need to read, decide, file attachments and info immediately, then delete the dang message.

Weekly Panera grading dates. You've probably read something about this over on Betsy's blog, but I need to commit to it as well. For some reason, it's so much easier for me to get school work done if I am not at home. Going to Panera with the girls makes it something I look forward to instead of dreading. We did this a lot at the beginning of the school year, and I was so much more caught up on grading and planning at that point.

Keep motivated and MAKE the time to run and exercise. When I get in the habit of running and working out, I really do like doing it. It's easy to do this during a two-week break from school, when I can go at any point during the day. I need to decide on a schedule and stick to it. Magazines and Web sites always say to schedule workouts on the calendar like you do every other appointment. Maybe I'll try that.

Kat, Mitzi and I have registered to run the Dallas Rock and Roll Half Marathon in March, so at least I have that date staring me down, and a training schedule to stick to. That helps on the motivation front.

Last year, I ran 375 miles. I would love to set a goal of running 500, or even 750, as I have tried to in the past, but I never make it that far. So, my goal is to best my total of 375 for this year. As long as I go farther than that, I'll be happy.

Keep knitting. And trying new and different patterns. Work through the yarn stash. Knit up what I already have, and then I can get new fun yarn. Maybe I'll start knitting things and randomly sending them to people I know...Who knows.

Reading. I would also like to continue my reading list. I've been trying to read more frequently than I had been in years, and I think I did a pretty good job last year. I'll keep up the list on the right side of my blog so you can see what I've been up to. If you have any suggestions for good reads, comment away. I'm always looking for new authors.

I suppose that's enough for now. I don't want to set a super-ambitious agenda simply because it's Jan. 1, and then disappoint myself later. Maybe I should make a goal to check in with myself every couple of months to see how it goes?

What are your New Year's resolutions? How will you do it?

I may not be blogging, but I have been tweeting...

And here's the proof. It's a word cloud of words I used most often in the last year.

Writing for my grad class - assignment 1

So, I thought since the first writing assignment for my graduate class was to write personally from a prompt, I'd put it here on the blog. That way, at least my (dwindling) followers would have SOMETHING to read this week.

We had a choice of about 15 prompts. None of them really resonated with me, but there was one like this: A time you knew you were in trouble.

So, I chose that one, and wrote about the one time I remember being seriously in trouble (at least enough that I was grounded from after-school activities for an entire semester). I think I've blocked out the major details, but it's still an interesting anecdote. We had to write EXACTLY 350 words. No more, no less. It was a great exercise in editing and word economy.

If nothing else, I'm sure mom will get a good laugh out of it.

•••
Friday night was the cast party for our winter musical. I chose to ride with one of my friends, and a senior friend, to the after party. I don’t even know whose house we went to or where we were. Once there, all I could think about was leaving. I was bored, and I was scared. At 14, I hadn’t been to a house party like that before, and I did not want to be around people who were smoking and drinking. I knew my parents would kill me.

The problem was I had no way home. I didn’t know where we were, but I knew it was somewhere near the Plaza or downtown. How was I going to get to Shawnee? Nobody else was ready to leave the party yet. I should have just called home, but I thought my parents would kill me for making the stupid decision to go to the party in the first place.

Looking back, I’m sure they would have been slightly perturbed at the prospect of picking me up after midnight, but that would have made them much happier than wondering where the hell I was at 5 o’clock on a Saturday morning.

Sitting at the party, I thought I’d be fine if I could just get home early enough that they would still be in bed. Mom never waited up for me, and Dad wouldn’t head for the golf course until 8 or so. Pretty solid plan, except for the fact that I forgot to turn off my alarm clock the day before.

Sleeping soundly, both parents were blissfully unaware their daughter was six hours past curfew, until my own alarm went off and woke them up.

•••

Crawling before I walk

I haven't been running lately. At all.

I've still been exercising, but it's mostly been walking and doing the Jillian Michael's 30-Day Shred videos. I've tried to run a couple of times since this summer, but it just didn't feel right. I think part of it was the heat toward the end of the summer, but I also think I was burned out after the marathon training earlier in the year.

Betsy and Mitzi were over here on Saturday and we were talking about Mitzi's KC 5K experience Saturday morning (it's a great story - you'll have to ask her to find out...). As we talked, I realized that she and I ran two half-marathons and one full marathon since this time last year.

We did the Kansas City Half-Marathon last October, the Olathe Half-Marathon in April, and the Seattle Marathon in June. Of the three, I'd say I had varying results - I finished KC 10 minutes before my goal time, Olathe right at my goal, and Seattle 45 minutes later than my goal. Each time, though, crossing the finish line felt damn good.

Thinking about those three accomplishments has gotten me thinking about running again. Plus, I REALLY want to beat my last year mile total. To do that, I'll have to run about 30 more miles this year. I think that's doable.

Tonight, I ran a TINY bit. Like, just a half-mile. It felt good, and I'm sure I could have done more, but like I said, I just haven't been feeling the running lately. My plan is to keep doing the Jillian workouts, but try to alternate those with walking/running days. I'll just add a couple minutes to each run, and hopefully I'll hit that end-of-the-year goal.

Beautiful weather like we had today certainly doesn't hurt the cause. It was 74 degrees when I left school!

Maybe I'll shoot for Olathe again next spring. I do so much better when I have a race in mind.

Who's with me?

Digging out from the junk

It's time to go back to school. Unofficially, at least, for now.

The first day back for teachers is actually a week from today, but I went back for a few hours on Monday, and then for a long day yesterday. I don't mind that I'm there having to do work, but I do mind that there's no air conditioning in my room!

Yuck.

I'm really trying to work on getting rid of stuff I don't use, and organize the paperwork I do have. I got a few new filing cabinets right when school got out, so I have more space for filing stuff, which has helped immensely. (Wow - aren't you excited, I'm finally blogging and I'm talking about filing paperwork! WOO HOO!)

I worked there by myself for a few hours, and then the yearbook editors came in to work on some of their stuff, and then the newspaper staff came in to work on the first day issue. It was nice to have the energy back in the room, and it gets me ready to start the year. We stayed until about 7 last night, since a lot of the kids are working during the day and then coming to school.

So, I think I'll putz around here for a while today, then go to school this afternoon. I'll try to get more excitement for you, blogosphere...

Memory Lane

So Betsy posted this a long time ago, and Mitzi finally updated her blog with it, so I thought tonight it would be my turn.

The rules: Bold the things you’ve done, and post on your blog!

Update: post has been edited to add asterisks to the things I've done. After I posted, I checked the blog and couldn't tell the difference between the bolded and not bold things.

1. Started your own blog*
2. Slept under the stars*
3. Played in a band*
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower*
6. Given more than you can afford to charity*
7. Been to Disneyland*
8. Climbed a mountain*
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo*
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea*
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch*
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning*
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables*
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight*
22. Hitchhiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill*
24. Built a snow fort*
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping*
27. Run a marathon*
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse*
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset*
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise*
33. Seen Niagara Falls
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community*
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied*
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke*
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing*
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling*
52. Kissed in the rain*
53. Played in the mud*
54. Gone to a drive-in theater*
55. Been in a movie*
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies*
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason*
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check*
68. Flown in a helicopter*
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy*
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial*
71. Eaten caviar*
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square*
74. Toured the Everglades*
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle*
79. Seen the Grand Canyon
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car*
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper*
85. Kissed a stranger at midnight on New Year’s Eve
86. Visited the White House*
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox*
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous*
92. Joined a book club*
93. Lost a loved one*
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo*
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a lawsuit
98. Owned a cell phone*
99. Been stung by a bee*
100. Bought your own home*

I have done 50 of the things on the list, so I'd say that's a good start for a 32-year-old. Hopefully I'll get some frequent flyer miles saved up and knock out the traveling items I haven't done yet...

Lists like this have to strike me when the mood is right. Usually, I think they're silly, but it was fun to go through this one. It brought back tons of memories of my early time in Wichita - the meteor shower with Travis, Teresa and Andy, filming "Dancing on the Moon" with Rod and the crew, the awesome Eagle ladies book club, and Hubs and my honeymoon. Each of those would have been blog posts unto themselves had I had a blog back then.

I wonder who comes up with lists like this. If I were to make up my own list, what would I include? Maybe that will be a blog post for another day.

Chalk up one more reason to despise PCs

The plan was to post a bunch of photos from the family vacay tonight, but when I attempted to burn a CD on mom's laptop so that I could put them on my laptop, all hell broke loose.

Thought the CD burned. Brought it home. It's unreadable by my Mac. PC people? Anybody? Help here?

I think I'll just take my jump drive over there tomorrow and copy them on to that - no burning required.

I won't post too much about the trip yet - the photos will make that better. We got back around 3:30 this afternoon. Adam and I helped Mom and Dad unload the RV, then we grabbed dinner at Ruby Tuesday's (Adam was craving salad, and they have the best salad bar). We were going to go to a movie, but decided to come home and watched "Close Encounters." Then, Mom called Adam's phone to inform us that I had left my purse and phone at their house, so I had to run over there to pick it up. Good thing they're only two minutes away by car...

I did come home to find one baby bird egg in one of the hanging plant baskets on the porch, so we'll have to keep an eye on that to see what happens. It rained on us all the way home from Arkansas, but none here, I guess. I really need it to rain, since SOMEBODY was "too busy" to water my plants while I was out of town.

•••

We have one half day with students tomorrow, and then again on Wednesday. I've got grading and work to do in the afternoons, hopefully all goes well.

Summer vacation - oh so close!

I promise I haven't died

I've just been really busy, that's all. And, now I've gone and gotten you all excited that there's actually a new post, and it won't really be that long.

I spent part of last week in Phoenix for the National High School Journalism Convention, and I have tons of cool photos to post from that, as well as a trip to Minneapolis the week before that. I will do it this week.

When I got home yesterday, I headed straight to Panera to do some grading with Betsy. For some reason, I get more done there than I do at home. Adam was working at the Home Depot (or, the Dee-POT, as I call it) when I got back in town, so Betsy and I passed the time until he got home.

Adam and I ate at the "sushi train" restaurant - not really called that but it's what we call it. Shawnee-ites will know it as Sakura at 75th and Nieman. We loved it last time we went, but this time it was too close to closing time. The same pieces of sushi that no one wanted kept coming around on the train. Lesson learned - go earlier in the day if you're going to be eating sushi off of a train that circles a bar.

Then, of course we had school today. Stayed til 5 to get some stuff done, and then I HAD to get a run in. Only did that once while in Phoenix, and we go 18 this weekend. Yikes.

Check back with me later this week for photos and more. Kickball practice Thursday and the season starts next week, so that oughta be some good blog fodder...

For now, bedtime!

Dave's got questions, I've got answers - El Guapo's season preview

Reigning Kansas City Kickball champs El Guapo are making spring season preparations. Fans and players are confident going into spring's games, but some worry that the team's reputation as the dominators will put a target on their backs.

The chances for an El-Guapo tres-peat (or, three-peat for the uninitiated) have really inspired the league's lesser teams to bring out the big guns against the handsome juggernaut.

"We know they all want to beat us," Manager Mike said. "That just means we'll play our Mariachi music a little louder and wear our sombreros a little bigger. We're not afraid to use intimidation techniques."

Manager Dave worries that El Guapo's star closer, Jill Chittum, might not be able to live up to expectations set by her perfomance in last season's championship games.

"We worry a little bit about her mental toughness going into those clutch situations," Dave said. "We know she can do it, but she lets the nerves really get to her."

The team looks to capitalize on Catcher Travis's catlike reflexes from behind the plate to keep up the defensive performance.

"Defense wins when it comes to kickball," Dave said. "But, it's still pretty damn sweet to blast a three-run homer out to deep center field."

Other teams in the league have compared El Guapo to a junkyard dog.

"They might not be pretty, they're quite the ragtag bunch," one opponent said. "But they'll kick anybody's ass who tries to step on their turf. You gotta watch out for El Guapo."

Adorable little French girl tells us a story...or, KITTENS, the French version

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Side Project - The View Across Town

Some of you might have already found "The View Across Town" since it's been hanging out in my blogroll for a few days now.

Back in December, Betsy said "I have an idea for us. A new blog project."

I said, "Okay." I'm pretty much up for anything.

She had seen a blog called 3191: A Year of Mornings, done by two friends who live across the country from each other. Each day, each friend posted an image. It's interesting to look at the blog, some days the images are eerily similar, even though they're posted from far-flung friends. It's also a similar concept to Jaime's blog, 366 images, except Jaime's doing that all on her own.

Betsy and I just live across town from each other, and she's interested in working on honing her photography skills and getting more creative with photos. I also am looking forward to this project because it will force me to shoot photos every day. It will be tough, since I spend my working hours with students whose faces I'm not allowed to post to God and everybody on the innernets. (Silly privacy laws...) But, it has been fun so far.

Sometimes, the photos come from events (like Adam and Jayne's birthday dinner), or shopping trips with friends, but I'm guessing most of my photos will be from the daily minutia. Like the thing that jump starts me each morning, or things around the homestead.

This will be a good exercise for me. Even when I was making my living as a photographer, my strength wasn't in making quiet little photos. I have always been much more able to capture moments of people DOING things. This project will be something different. I can already tell it will be frustrating on some days. All of my photos will be taken with my Canon Digital Elph, or my iPhone. Sometimes I see something that would make a great photo, if only I had a telephoto lens, or the ability to keep the shutter open for much longer than either of those cameras will allow.

But, I must live as I teach. That camera is just a box that lets light in. Don't get all worked up because you're not carrying the same equipment as the guy next to you. (We have to repeat this over and over at summer photo workshops when kids say "But how can I ever make good photos with THIS?)

I hope that you'll add The View Across Town to your blog roll, and check us out each day. As always, comments are welcomed and encouraged. We like to know that someone out there somewhere is interested in all this stuff we put on the web.

Thanks to Betsy for wanting to do this, and to Jaime for being my inspiration for the project.

You will be traveling and coming into a fortune

Well, I will be, according to my Chinese food fortune tonight. Let's hope that speaks the truth for what will be happening in 2009 for me, and for you.

The year 2008 was a great one for us - a great "new" house, continuing to have good jobs in the sketchy economy, incredible friends, half marathon, lots of knitting, and family and friendily time.

Before bed tonight, I'll tack that fortune to my vision board, and see if "The Secret" can make it come true for me this year. Maybe I'll earn a fortune from Google Ads? Who knows.

Here's to another year of blogging, tweeting, living, knitting, crafting, laughing and loving.

Happy New Year to all - hope it's a wonderful one!

Previously Unreleased - 2008 Photos

These photos are a selection of my iPhoto library since the Great Laptop Crash of August 2008. I wasn't as religious with the blogging as I wanted to be, so a lot of these photos should have shown up throughout the year, but didn't.

Our aluminum tree.

Thanksgiving Break. (Adam pretty much does this every weekend morning, though.)

Sushi lunch in St. Louis

St. Mary's Mountain and Church, Altus, Ark. Thanksgiving Day

Helping out the neighborhood squirrel population

Adam and I breaking in Rock Band at Mom and Dad's

Adam playing the drums later that night at our house
(for some reason, I love the look on his face)

Waterfire on the Plaza.

Checking progress on a knit in the van on the way to Arkansas.

Kyle modeling (?) his new hat knitted by his mama

The line when we went to vote after school one day

My Thanksgiving dinner at St. Mary's

Kasie wins a pooping reindeer during Christmas bingo

Visit from L means a trip to the park

Jayne was all smiles, hopped up on pain meds after surgery

Why do cats always pick the clean laundry?

How'd you get up there?

Emma's lion

First big snow of the season

Friday night at Blanc Burger

The "other" cat in our lives, Betty

This is what happens when you play too much Rock Band

I love the look on Lauryn's face in this photo

Can't go wrong with a tiny shopping cart.

This post might serve as a bit of a preview for a project Betsy had an idea for. We're working to get it off the ground. I'll keep you posted on that.

All of these photos were taken either with the iPhone, or my Canon Digital Elph. Looks like the blog might be more interesting if I posted these THROUGHOUT the year, eh?

Happy New Year's Eve, everybody! Have fun and be safe.

See you in 2009.

You can fix (or make) anything out of Duct Tape

The crafty shenanigans were in full force tonight at Casa de Chittum. Last week on "Today" a crafty author, Jodi Kahn, demonstrated making tote bags out of T-shirts and duct tape, using staples to hold it all together. She's shilling a new book, "Simply Sublime No Sew Bags."

I DVRed it, thinking this was definitely a project right up our alley.

Each of the girls picked out a shirt to use, I picked up a new rotary cutter and mat from JoAnn's, Mitzi picked up the duct tape and brought the stapler. We watched the video a couple more times, and Amy LM came over to give us some moral support and tell funny stories.

You have to cut the sleeves off of the shirts, then turn them inside out and line them with the duct tape. It's easier than it sounds, but it does take a little time.

I guess if you got fed up with the project at this point, you'd have a nice, easily cleanable paint smock - just wipe and go!

I chose a red River Run T-shirt, and luckily Mitz had picked up some red tape, and it was exactly the right shade. Then, we worked on a pink shirt for Bets and a cool environmentally messaged T for Mitzi.



Amy shot that photo of Betsy and Mitzi demonstrating how this purse project is something twins joined at the head might be able to participate in.

Once you get the inside lined with tape, you have to "seam" the bottom of it with a line of staples, then reinforce the seam with a line of tape.

Shape the armholes and neckhole the way you want it (makes the straps for the bag) and then turn it inside out. Your cool T-shirt will be on the outside.

Obviously, I've taken out a few steps along the way, but you mostly get the idea. If you're interested in making your own bags, let me know and I'll dig up the link with the how-to video.


Mitzi models her finished product.

Betsy models hers. Realized after they'd gone home that I didn't have a photo of mine all finished. I'll add it tomorrow.

Joshua decided he wanted to get in on the act, so we whipped him up a duct tape wallet. Of course, found the instructions for that on the internet.

This was before we decided that the measurements online were a little GIANT for a normal wallet. We did a little trimming and creative crafting to come up with a finished product.

That's his retired wallet on the right, and our product on the left.

My biggest piece of advice if you're interested in undertaking a project like this: figure out when the tape will be on sale, then buy a bunch of it. The rolls of tape were about $7 apiece, and it took just about an entire roll of the colored tape to do one shirt. They make the tape in just about any color nowadays, but the colored rolls seemed to be smaller than the traditional silver duct tape.

I've got a great tie-dye shirt I'd like to make a yellow-tape bag with. Let me know if you hear the colored rolls go on sale!

These bags would make really cool knitting project bags. I plan to load mine up tomorrow and shoot some photos of it so you can check it out.

Windy wack

I had planned to write a blog post about how I have pretty much done absolutely nothing the last few days except hang out with the family, eat Christmas goodness, and do a little shopping. So much nothing that I slept over at my parents' house the last two nights. We stay up late, and then I don't feel like going home to a cold, empty house. Adam is still visiting his family in Salt Lake.

Last night, though, Mitzi and I decided we needed to get out and about, so we went to see "Doubt" with my aunt. Great movie. I love both Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman, and they were incredibly intense in the movie.

After we dropped off Alice, Mitzi stayed over for a bit. We knitted, watched "What Not To Wear" and "The Dog Whisperer." She went home around midnight, and I went to bed.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I woke to the sound of the wind outside. WIND. What the hell? I'm a very heavy sleeper. It takes giant thunder claps and lightning to wake me up. Last night, though, the wind did it.

I got up, peeked out the window, went to the bathroom, and crawled back in bed. In my half-asleep/half-awake state, I reasoned that it must not be a tornado, because I didn't hear sirens. I think I did contemplate for a split second going into the bathtub just in case...but only for a second. (I was half asleep and groggy!)

When we got home from the movie last night at 10, the car thermometer read 65 degrees. It was warm out - we weren't wearing coats, and I had the vent going driving home.

When I went out to pick up limbs this morning, most of them were covered in a layer of ice, and it was 32 out.

Of course I didn't pull the car into the garage last night, so there was a little ice on it this morning. I moved it in the garage since the weather is supposed to get worse later today.

I call this photo: "When's summer?" Through the ice, you can see my bike hanging in the window, and those Christmasy colored blobs in the bottom right are our coolers/camping gear.


I'm pretty sure there are still some lose limbs that will come crashing out of the trees if we get ice today, or if the wind kicks up again. Luckily, nothing fell on the cars or the roof.

Our trees are really old - I was just looking at photos of the house from back in the day, and the trees were about six feet tall. They really need to be trimmed, but with wind like this, they're getting thinned out.

No, we don't normally keep the trash can lying on it's side next to the fence.


Our giant pampas grass always falls over when it snows or ices. The weight pulls the grass down. It always looks so pitiful like that.

We're supposed to go over to Julie's for Sax Christmas this afternoon. I hope the weather holds out for that. I'd be quite perturbed if we haven't had a school snow day yet this year, but our Christmas celebration gets snowed out!

I read in the Star that the Wal-Mart at 159th and Metcalf will be closed for a while because of structural damage and a broken gas line. That's right next to my school - guess it was a lot worse out there. Hope my students are all okay.