dear mr. president, thanks.

thanks for forcing me to cancel my gym membership.

hey, you're welcome.

it all started at the beginning of the year when my little family of three fell off the fiscal cliff. i know, i know, the government agreed on a plan to avoid that. yup, we all drank the kool-aid and breathed a sigh of relief that our income taxes would not increase.

and then we were blindsided by the 2% increase in social security taxes. ouch. and our health insurance costs went up. ugh. and the cost-of-living is redonkulous. boo. bottom. of. the. cliff. i popped open my trusty laptop and created a family budget, but after chopping the luxuries and dropping the necessities down to the bare bones, we were still not in the black. it was time for slash and burn tactics. thus, i cancelled my gym membership. budget success. fitness fail.

what?! yes. i cancelled my gym membership. after fourteen months of diligently dragging myself to spin class four days a week, i was suddenly going to be on my own. luckily, i had recently discovered the joy of walking to the state park near our house. i stomped along to my music and big-E watched the world go by. awesome for both of us and four miles round trip. plus, big-E got to run around and explore the park. golden. i got off to a great start. every day i came home from work, changed, packed big-E into the stroller and off we went.

and then one day, i got a bug up my bum wondering what would happen if i tried to run part of the way. i started slow, alternating between jogging and walking. each day i would jog a little further. and one day i jogged half of the way home. and the next day i jogged all the way home. and then i jogged both ways. and next thing you know, i was jogging 4 miles a day, 6 days a week. pushing a stroller.

what?! yes. this kid, a self-proclaimed NON-RUNNER, suddenly turned into a runner. okay, fine, 15-minute miles probably only qualify me to be called a jogger. same effing difference people!! and i am addicted. fo' reals, yo. i jog four days a week and walk two days a week. since the first of the year, i have jogged/walked 150 miles. mind blowing.

mama runs faaast!!

but wait, there is more. more? yes, more. recently, while en route to the park, just for fun i sped up for the second mile. and after doing this a few times, i clocked it at 10 minutes. a ten-minute mile! in the grand scheme of things, i am aware that i am not exactly burning up the pavement. i am sure i know plenty of people who can run a 10-minute mile going backwards, but seriously y'all, that is by far, the fastest my two feets have carried me since middle school.

go mama!!

so, mr. president, thanks to you (and the members of congress), i find myself fitter and faster than i have been in over twenty years. and my pants fit better. i have been tightening the belt figuratively and literally. congratulations to me.

hey, you're welcome.

that hat.

big-E.

once again, it has been forever since my last post. ever since big-E (the baby formerly known as pringle) stopped sleeping 22 hours a day and then became mobile, i never seem to have time to sit down to breathe, let alone keep up with my blog. plus, in the last year, my world has completely shifted. i am now an art teacher and mama to a toddler. not sure what direction that will take my blog, but i am rather certain there will be a lot more posting about children and art.

 

nothing earth-shattering to share today, i just decided it was high time to stop the blog silence. and i simply have to tell you about my latest sewing project. YES, sewing! it does still happen on a rare occasion. i have a gadzillion projects piled up on my sewing table and i finally determined it was time to tackle the mountain. first up, a hat for big-E. we have misplaced his adorable sun hat and life in florida demands that the kiddo have a sunhat. we cant wait until we unearth the old one and i refuse to pay the big bucks required to procure a cute hate, so i made a new one. 

i found this fabulous tutorial by oliver+S. dug up some lovely plaid material and set to work. first thing, i affirmed that my kid has a giant head. he needs a medium, which is sized for 3-5 year olds. right. i had to add a chin strap, because despite the size of his noggin, the kid is too young for reasoning and simply wont listen to me when i tell him to stop yanking off his hat. i also refused to hand sew the last step, so i machine stitched it. worked like a charm. end result is a totally fantastic hat. and i can definitively recommend this pattern & tutorial. total awesomeness.

the big ONE.

hard to believe, but little pringle is one year old. it has been a crazy wonderful year. and of course the big question was, to have a party or not? we all know he ain't going to remember any of it, nor will he understand what is happening, but we will. so we had a party.

the beginnings of a banner

we wanted to keep it small and simple, but i am me and simple is NOT in my dna. simple design, yes. simple projects, nope. my brain went into overdrive figuring out exactly how to transform our building's blah blah blah community room into the perfect spot for a first birthday party.

the community room. oy vey.

i painted some lovely banners, the mister created gads and gads of strings with colorful squares, we sewed some monster party favors, and we made paper stars and paper chains. we happily, the end result was dreamy.

the mister and his helper making wall coverings.

yummy.

the food corner.

i love this wall, sigh.

and then there was the cake. naturally i consulted the internet, but what i found was ridiculously intimidating. there are some seriously overachieving parents out there!!! i am not, nor have i ever been, known for my baking, so trying to make a dump truck sculpture with cake was definitely beyond my skill level. but i still wanted it to be special. i had it in my head that i would make the entire thing from scratch...cake AND frosting. of course, my kitchen is not equipped with any type of electrified mixer and apparently these gadgets make the process a whole lot easier. right. oh well. i decided to make a "trial" cake for our little family-of-three celebration that we had on the little guy's actual birthday. the cake was bright green. delicious, but seriously crumbly. the frosting took three tries. the final version was chocolately goodness, but hard. of course, pringle was delighted with the result. in fact, he got upset when we took it away. 

numero uno.

even though it was yummy, the mister and i decided that the cake for the party needed some improvements. enter betty crocker. in the end i made a four-layer cake, with blue and green layers. and white frosting with orange decorations. the design was simple, simple, simple, and it turned out sooooooooooooo pretty. so so pretty. i kept opening the fridge to look at it, because i was so surprised that it turned out so glorious. and the taste..well, betty crocker did a fabulous job, so the cake was scrumptious. and did i mention it was pretty? it was.

i adore this cake. it makes me giddy.

staring down the cake.

monster party favors!!

all in all, it was a delightful party. and pringle had super much fun.

the birthday boy.

you have no pants.

the folks in lesotho do not have large quantities of clothes stashed away in their closets. actually, they don't have closets, they have free-standing wardrobes, but that is a horse of a different color. the point is they do not have a lot of clothes. but they have clothes. they do not run around wearing leaves and leather thongs. in fact, they dress a lot like us....well, sort of. what i mean to say is that just like us, they wear skirts, pants, shorts, t-shirts, dresses, jackets, etc. 

even the babies and children have clothes. sometimes it seems like babies have the most clothes, because it is handed down from kid-to-kid. they grow out of it before it wears out, so it accumulates. which makes it all the more entertaining that small children can often be found sans pants. especially in the summer. maybe it is because their mothers are tired of washing diapers or just because the kids are tired of pants. i do not know. but one of my fellow peace corps volunteers started telling kids "you have no pants." this line never ceased to make us laugh hysterically. [side note: in the light of day on my couch in the U.S.A., i struggle to convey the hilarity, but peace corps volunteers will laugh at almost anything...i guess it is a mechanism of self-preservation that prevents you from spending all of your time crying.]

pringle's first-ever fitting.

since it still makes me giggle, i like to say it to pringle. all the time. he wears onesies EVERY day, with no pants. we save his two pairs of pants for outings. although i do love to tell him that he has no pants, i think they look adorable on him and i wish he had more. but it seems insane to pay money for unnecessary clothes he will grow out of in a month. so i googled pants patterns. how hard can they be, right? oh my. not only are they not hard, they are ridiculously EASY. (check out my tutorial.)

first pattern. needs work.

i found a two-piece pattern that is sized for infants, but the pants do not fit so lovely in the bum. then i found a four-piece pattern that is PERFECT. except it is sized for a 2 year old. so i put together the information gleaned from these patterns, my pre-existing knowledge of how pants are constructed, and a pair of pringle's pants to create my own pattern. perfectly sized for pringle.

second pattern. nifty, but needs work.

and now i am obsessed. O.B.S.E.S.S.E.D. seriously. i made him three pairs yesterday and i have plans for more. LOTS more. this kid will never again be sans pants, because i think he is beyond adorable when he wears them. and they did not cost me a dime. thank you neverending stash of fabric.

third pattern. presto perfecto!!

minimalist amusement.

a week after the mister and i found out we were pregnant, i dragged him to the local baby store. my goal was not to show him all of the things i wanted for our baby, but rather to show him the vastness of the world of baby products, most of which i was hoping to avoid purchasing. i had rather strong opinions on what i wanted, but having never before had a baby i was not always sure what things were optional. i tried to find a list for guidance, but oh geez. i found gads of lists and they were all endless. yikes. in the end, we just went with our gut, buying the bare essentials with a plan to add as needed. we are not trying to deny pringle anything, we are just raising the kid on a budget. it turns out there is even a name for this... the minimalist baby.

this week the mister and i decided that pringle NEEDS a crib mobile. perhaps this seems like a strange necessity, but let us examine the facts. one, the kid is obsessed with the things that dangle from his play gym. and two, the kid wakes up at the crack of dawn and wants to play. clearly he needs in-crib entertainment....anything to buy us a couple extra minutes of z's. we pondered an ikea mobile, but it does not come with any way to attach to a crib. not sure why they call it a *crib* mobile, but that is a horse of a different color. long story short, it was not working for us, so the mister and i joined forces and made pringle a mobile.

the mister attached the arm of an adjustable lamp to the side of the crib and i sewed together some bits of cloth. we put it all together and now pringle has an adjustable crib mobile. he cannot take his eyes off of it. just in case he does, we also stuck a mirror on the wall so he can talk to himself. frugal-style fun and games.