Creamie turned three.  And now she’s three going on seventeen.  She finally gained some weight and is no longer in the fifth percentile, but has moved right on up to the thirtieth.  I can stop buying whole milk.  On her birthday we went to her choice of places for dinner, had cake and ice cream at home and opened a few presents.  It was perfect.

She is in love with the bathtub.  I usually have to fill it up with hot water twice so that she can stay and play as long as she likes.  I am continually amazed at how entertained she is in such a small place with a few measuring cups and two ducks.   She loves the tub.

My sister Heidi got married on January 20 to a wonderful guy.  Really, he is one of the best men I know.  For the occasion I made seven little flower girl dresses.  And I made her invitations/announcements, designed the programs for the ceremony, helped her make the centerpieces, the groomsmen boutonnieres, and some ribbon wands for the little girls.  Thanks to my mom for babysitting me through the zippers in these dresses, I can finally do them on my own. Now i can cross that irrational fear off my list.  Zippers? Conquered.

These cutie little girls.  I wish I had a not phone pic, but it will be another few weeks before the photographer gets any proofs back to Heidi and I didn’t take a single picture with my camera.  I was a little busy tying sashes so they were all the same and straightening hairbows.  But I can’t wait to see real pictues! (One little girl was MIA.  Ok, it was cold, she is 2 months old and she stayed wrapped up in a fuzzy blanket with her mama

The little boys.  SO so cute.  Seriously, these boys were the cutest little groomsmen ever.

This is all the snow we have had since the end of last April.  (I got to at least see snow in October, but not at my own house. Lameness.) I am pretty upset about this whole fakeout winter.  This so doesn’t count as a snowstorm in my book.  I guess I still have a few months before our chances are completely gone, but now that it’s February my hopes are pretty low.

Her big request for her birthday was balloons, pink orange and blue.  It took two full weeks before they lost all their sauce and were rolling around the floor. Best birthday present ever in her mind.

Last week I went to my first Modern Quilt Guild meeting in Salt Lake City.  I got to work on a new project, which is almost finished, and hang out with these girls and sew and eat and chat.  It was a great way to spend a Saturday.  What with the wedding sewing and the birthday sewing and party planning it was really nice to have some time to myself where I could work on something that I wanted to work on. (Me, Amy, Leigh, Erin).  I really can’t wait to move to the big city so these meetings and these girls are closer.  Oh, and Scott’s work and blah blah blah.

We’ve been listening to records.  My dad gave Scott a record player for Christmas and I’ve been collecting old vinyl every time I visit the thrifts.  It’s been a really fun hobby.

And I know I showed you the phone version of this a while ago, but it’s one of my very favorite pictures from the past little while.  You just can’t go wrong with pancakes and sprinkles and washitape flags.  It’s a no fail plan for a party.  Everytime.  OK, I’m working on a few Valentine projects.  Starting tomorrow I’ll have a new project or treat or something each day till Valentines day.  And after that I think I’ll officially be back on the blogging wagon.  Thanks for all your support friends, you are the best.  I’ll get into a really mushy sentimental post about all that later, but just know that I so appreciate those of you who leave comments, who email me, who don’t ever leave comments but are just a little number in my site stats, and those of you who receive updates in your email.  Thanks for the virtual support network that you have been for me.  //End of the sappy/sentimental crap for this post. //

I’ve mentioned over the past few months that Scott got a new job, is now working crazy hours and is gone a lot more than he was.  What I haven’t so much mentioned is anything about his old job.  He and a few partners owned a civil engineering firm.  It was a wonderful opportunity for a while, but after the housing bubble burst here in the USA things changed.  (Civil Engineering is designing subdivisions,  roadways, pipelines, sewer systems, etc.  All things that are in about as much demand as new subdivisions.  Which lately has been zero.)  Their firm layed off a lot of employees just a few months after Creamie was born in 2009.  That allowed them to keep the company open and still give a few people work on a contract basis, but still save a lot of money in taxes and medical insurance premiums.  They had some good projects.  We were surviving.  Barely.  But making it more or less.

Things went along for better or worse for two years.  We always felt like we were still doing what we were supposed to be doing. We still felt like we were on the right path.  They were working hard.  Constantly trying out new projects and areas.  Solar, Hydro-power, all sorts of awesome new things.  They always had a few good projects in the works the kept us all afloat.  And then this past spring things changed drastically.  Work was scarcer, clients had gone bankrupt or disappeared leaving us with piles of open invoices.  Lots of interest in the new kinds of projects, but no money to fund them.  And everything was hanging (and still is) on one last big project that has been pushed back and postponed for one reason or another for the past 3 years.  (On December 19th cross your fingers for us, we are getting closer to seeing this one become a reality, just a few more hoops to jump… I hope.)  By the beginning of summer we knew we had to look for something else.  Now.  Things quickly got worse at work.  Then worse again.  Who knows how many paychecks we have skipped over the past few years, but this spring and summer were particularly bad.  For the first time ever we knew we had to find something else immediately.  Scott applied for jobs.  Lots of jobs.  Applied for jobs for 8 hours a day.  And we heard nothing.  I cried a lot.  I ate a lot of Oreos.  Standard coping mechanisms.

And then the first of August he finally got an interview.  One interview.  He aced it.  He was hired out of 140 applicants and 11 interviewees in a unanimous board decision.  It was not a moment too soon.  (And perhaps a few moments later than I would have preferred.)  But the Lord works in mysterious ways and looking back we can see that He prepared us for this opportunity for a long time.  Anyway, his new job is awesome.   His coworkers are awesome.  He loves his work.  We have great benefits.  Good insurance, with zero out of pocket premium for us.  I have dental insurance for the first time in my life.  I might get my wisdom teeth out next year! (Yep, all four are hanging out in there hurting and driving me nuts everytime I brush my teeth.)  But the best part?  He goes to work every week and they pay him for that.  Like, hand out paychecks on Fridays and stuff.  But wait, get this, the money is magically already in the bank.  They just stick it right in your account.  It is amazing.  And then two weeks later They. Do. It. Again.  And then again.  It’s a beautiful system.  Really, an amazingly beautiful system.

Anyway, that was four months ago.  And things are better.  So so much better.  But there are still those three-ish years of missed paychecks and bankrupt/dirty-rotten-no-good-corrupt clients to deal with.  And it will take time to be out from under all of that.  This Christmas was looking to be really lean.  Leaner than any other we’ve had in our almost 8 years.  I have enough craft supplies and fabric that Creamie would never know the difference.  She is all set to wake up to a child’s dreamland of handmade toys on Christmas morning.  And Scott and I were OK deciding to forgo gifts this year.  We have each other, we have a warm home, food to eat and clothes to wear.  We have a good job and a lot of faith that all things will eventually work out for our good in the end.  But I knew that there wasn’t any extra money this Christmas.  None, not even for little things.  We got slapped with a $300 HOA fee from our less than awesome condo board a few weeks ago and it had to be paid.  (Everyone under our HOA board jurisdiction had to pay it.  It’s not because we didn’t clean up our patio or had weird crap hung in the windows or anything.)  And there went Christmas.  To the HOA board.  Lame.

I don’t care about the presents, neither does Scott.  What I really want for Christmas is a whole weekend to work in my craft room and sew and make pie.  And like I said, there is enough fabric stacked up in my house that Creamie will have the best handmade Christmas a girl could hope to have.  But what it really meant was that there was no money for a tree this year.  Not even a little one.  I arrived at this conclusion the day before Thanksgiving.  It was horrible.  I cried.  And cried.  And then I opened the pantry and made seventeen pies.  I am not joking.  I tried to pretend it didn’t matter, but by that weekend I was sobbing. A lot. At the smallest thing I’d tear up again.

Creamie has been asking for a Christmas tree since we took it down last Christmas.  That girl has a memory like a steel trap, nothing slips through that little mind of hers.  We looked into a few cut your own tree lots, because they are usually a little less expensive.  And we looked into a few programs to cut a tree from government land, but all the permits were all sold out already.  I even looked at fake trees at thrift stores, but they are almost as much as a cut your own lot.  And I had pretty much come to the conclusion that there would be no Christmas tree with popcorn garland and gingerbread boys in my living room this year.  I thought maybe on Christmas Eve I could convince my favorite tree lot guy (we get our trees from him every year, and have since I was a girl) to let me have whatever he had left and we could decorate it then.  And it would be fine.  And Creamie would love it.  But I would have felt like Christmas was missing at my house for the whole of December.  And that made my heart sick and it made me cry.

And then a small miracle happened.  One that restores my faith in people, faith in Christmas, faith in love and goodwill toward men.  Friday afternoon there was a loud knock on my door.  REALLY loud. And the doorbell at the same time.  I looked out the peephole (because that is what you do when someone pounds on your door) and there was a miracle on the porch.  A big green miracle that brought tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat. Our Christmas was at the door. We have been doorbell ditched with a huge beautiful Christmas tree.

We had to snip off the top to fit it in the house it was so tall.  Creamie saw it and freaked out, screaming in pure joy.  I just stood there and said a silent prayer of thanks.  Even thinking about it now it makes me cry.  We pulled out the Christmas things.  I opened box after box.  I tested lights and mixed up gingerbread boys and made popcorn.  We spent Saturday, Sunday and Monday stringing popcorn and baking cookies into gingerbread ornaments and hanging candy canes and jinglebells on our big beautiful tree. First thing out of Creamie’s mouth every morning is “Can I do some more Christmas things on the tree?”

It takes up a whole corner of the room, and it looks like it is on fire what with the 1600 lights on it.  (I could have used 700 or so more.  I didn’t do any lights on the bottom half on the side facing the wall.)  And everysingle time I look at it I am reminded of how good some people really are.  And how if we pay attention to the feelings and nudges we have we can work miracles in other people’s lives.  I am so grateful for this small miracle in mine.  I know it is “just a Christmas tree.”  But more than that it is a reminder to me of new life.  Of hope.  Of love.  That no matter how hard or crazy or crappy things are right now, that it will change.  We will get through it.  If pine trees can survive the harsh cold winters year after year and stay beautiful and alive surely I can do this right now.  Things really are going to work out.  Somehow.  Things are going to be “OK”, whatever that means.  Christmas is here in our little house.  And thanks to the kindness of our Christmas Angel it is in my heart too.

Monday: Field trip to the firestation.  And we were all sick.  Scott home sick from work, me hopped up on cold medicine and armed with a lot of tissues for her very runny nose.  But we couldn’t miss the firestation.  She took her own hat and carried it around the whole time.

Tuesday morning: Made one little Indian costume for her babydoll for show and tell, done before 8:30am.  A miracle.

Wednesday (a busy day): started by climbing on an icy roof to put up my moms Christmas lights.  Six strands of them.

Then Creamie fell off a barstool and got a huge bump on her head and a major bloody lip. Lovely.

So that called for a frozen yogurt date instead of a sandwich for lunch.  It has protein in it, right? and fruit? and dairy? As far as I am concerned it was a well curated healthy meal.

And since the icecream made her feel so much better, on the way home we took a detour to my favorite thrift store.  The detour was a good idea.  I came home with lots of treasures but this was the score of the day.  I can’t wait to get this cleaned up and put it in my house.  Fiveteen bucks of love right there.

Thursday: It was a rough day around here… I ate a whole pan of brownies.  But not the crusts. I am an anti-crusty brownie advocate.  If someone would hurry up and invent an edgeless brownie pan that would be stupendous.  Sorry edge lovers, these all went in the trash.

Friday: A little better, but still not totally awesome.  So we built another fort in the living room out of old sheets and watched movies and played in there all day.  Here she is wearing her cape, rainboots, indian feather headband from preschool and nothing else. Ha!

Saturday: Went to a baby shower for my friend who is finally pregnant, and with twins! Then to lunch with my sister, which is always awesome. (I bought the pattern for these from etsy shop winter peach).

Sunday: I just made Pumpkin Spice EggNog Ice Cream.  Recipe: Buy eggnog, mix with a little cream and pour into the ice cream freezer. Wow.  So so good.

This afternoon we took some more pictures of outfits Heidi has put together for me.  I’ll post some tomorrow.  We didn’t do very many because, surprisingly, changing clothes in the car at the park in 35 degree weather is not very fun.  I’ll have to figure out a new method I suppose…  I hope your week was lovely.

This was the deepest snow we found to play in.  We just stopped on the side of a very muddy road and hopped out into a foot of snow in this mountain meadow.  Creamie loved it.  And because the top few inches was pretty crusty, she didn’t sink to her hips and was able to stomp around and make tiny little snowballs.  It was hilarious.

This is Navajo Lake, the same lake in the picture I posted yesterday.  Only this year it was a bit colder.  Actually the highway this lake is off of had to close over the weekend because of an avalanche that took out the road.  Estimated reopening? Between two weeks and next spring.

Most of the young aspen trees (those are the one’s with the yellow leaves) that we passed were all bent over with the weight of the snow.  Ideally, their leaves should fall off before it snows.  Otherwise they hold too much snow on those leaves and the weight will literally snap them in half or pull them out of the ground as they bend over.  It was incredible.

Helping her dad build a snowman.  This was the very first order of business, as soon as we unpacked those little boots.

Yesterday we drove to Cedar Breaks National Monument.  A little sign directs you to a parking lot and a short trail.  Which looks like this.  And then when you get to the edge of that fence?

Beauty.  Pure Amazing Beauty.  The rim of Cedar Breaks is over 10,000 feet, and this rock amphitheater plunges 2,500 feet in amazing rock formations. A photograph just can’t do it justice.  Last year when we went it was not as snowy, but there was a bitterly cold wind.  With that in mind we came prepared this time.  (Also, this year Creamie didn’t have to wear her mittens on her feet due to poor planning on her parents part… ahem.)  But there was no wind, just warm sunshine reflecting on the snow and amazing beauty all around us.

Her preferred vantage point.  HA!  Also, you’ll notice her snowpants are soaked…

It’s because the only thing she really wanted to do was stomp in the puddles.  Over and over and over again.  Then she’d throw little snowballs in there and stomp them again.  I think I took about 200 pictures just trying to time that moment and catch the perfect splash.  Victory!

I built a happy little snowman to watch over the mountain and keep visitors company.  Also, Creamie thinks snowmen are the greatest friends ever.  I’ll share a few more pictures tomorrow and then it’s back to real life.  Halloween is coming up and I’m almost done writing a tutorial for her first Halloween costume.  It is by far my most popular post and I get requests for instructions all the time.  This week!  Yay!

Creamie started taking a dance class with some of her little friends.  It is just once a week, and her teacher is a teenage girl who is earning money to continue her own dance class, which I am thrilled to be supporting.  Watching her dance around is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.  Last week she insisted on wearing Batman with her tutu.  And rainboots.  I found these boots at the thrift store for $3.25 last week and she will hardly take them off to take a bath.  I love it.

We have been busy here at Casa Pinksuedeshoe.  I’ve been working on a lot of projects, unfortunately none of them are for me.   Well, except this raspberry peach pie me and my mom made the other day.  Recipe is still in the testing phase, but holy crap.  This might be the best pie I’ve ever eaten.  And I kind of consider myself a connoisseur of pie.  I’ve also been doing a lot of thrifting.  And I’ve had some amazing luck.  I don’t usually shop for clothes for me at the thrift store, but my sister has converted me.  And I’ve purchased a new fall wardrobe in the past few weeks that I love.  I’ll share pictures soon.

I completely lucked out on Saturday.  I don’t usually go thrifting on saturdays, but since Scott is working 12-16 hours EVERY SINGLE FREAKING DAY  it didn’t actually feel like a Saturday.  And I found this whole stack of vintage Pyrex for $10.  Those two on the bottom are really big, 4 quarts each!  I was so excited!  I’ve also found a lot of new sheets lately.  I finally found the perfect sheet to make this dress.  And it was brand new, still in the package.  Score!  Proper thrifting post soon.  I promise.  I have so many new treasures, I love it!

I made myself a new skirt a bit ago.  I’ve worn it a few times, and I love the color and the fit, but one thing always bugs me.  I didn’t have green serger thread, so I left it white and just hemmed it under.  And when I am standing, it’s totally fine.  No problemo.  But when I walk and my skirt moves and swishes you can see this awful white stripe of serger thread on the inside of the hem.  So I colored it with a sharpie.  Problem solved.  I’m resourceful like that.

Scott’s birthday was on Monday, and Creamie and I met up with him for lunch.  We went to a great Brazillian place and ate as much food as we could hold.  This was dessert.  I don’t remember what it was called, but it’s like a churro that was filled with a creamy pudding and topped with caramel.  Amazing.  We took a good long lunch and it was so nice to talk to him in the middle of the day.  He used to work right next door to our house, so I got to talk to him at lunch everyday.  I miss it.  I can’t wait to move closer so we can do lunch together more often.

I was pretty sure that neither of us would be eating dinner after what we ate for lunch.  And I was right.  And so instead of making a REAL birthday cake, Creamie helped me make him THIS birthday cake.  I did the cutting, and she did the choosing and the gluing.  And she wrote his name up there at the top (the gray “letters” across the top of the page.)  She was so excited to give it to him and sing him Happy Birthday (all by herself)  when he finally came home.  I need to do more crafty projects with her.  She is in heaven with a gluestick and a pair of scissors.

So, to continue this post’s theme of complete and total randomness, here is my newest favorite picture.  Target has vampire teeth in the dollar section.  Thanks to my friend for sharing some with us.  She loves to wear them!

And, one last bit of randomness for your Wednesday, fall is officially here and I can smell winter in the air.  Last Saturday there was snow on the mountains when I woke up.  I can see the leaves up there starting to change color and just in the past week there are a lot of new patches of red and orange.  I have been making a lot of soup and bread, and I can’t wait to wake up to snow!

I woke up early this morning, about 5:00 while Scott was getting ready to go to work.  And unfortunately  I couldn’t go back to sleep.  With his new job and new commute he gets up at 4:45 am and leaves by 5:15.  He doesn’t get back home until 7:30 or so, and is asleep by 9:00 pm.  Our time together as a family has changed so drastically.  I am still adjusting, Creamie misses her daddy all the time and I am running out of ideas to keep us both occupied for so long without him.  Sigh. The first day of preschool starts in a few hours and I am not quite sure what I’ll do while Creamie is off learning numbers and colors and how to share.  Maybe I’ll take my art journal box and go hang out at the park for a little while.  We’ll see how put together I get in the next two hours…

Except he is going to have a much longer commute.  His commute for the past five years has been really short.  Two years of a whole mile and a half roundtrip each day (including coming home for lunch) and the past two years it has been a whopping 100 yards.  His office is right next door.  I saw him all the time, Creamie saw him all the time, and whever I couldn’t get the TV/Printer/Computer/whatever to work right he’d run home and solve all my problems.  And how his commute will be more than an hour each way.  And he is going to be on a 4 days a week, 10 hour day shift.  Which should mean that we’d have all Friday together, but he’ll still be finishing up some projects at his other job for the next few months and his Friday’s are already booked.

My days are going from him being gone for 8 or 8.5 hours each day to him being gone for 14 hours a day.  And things need to change around here.  Lots of things.  So while I figure it out I’m going to continue my little break.  I might have a few new projects that get finished (I have two new skirts that are finished but all my pictures look awful) or I might just repost a few things from my archives.  I might post some of the Instagram* pics I’ve been taking (I have stayed on top of that 30 day goal!) and I might not post a thing.  I am so grateful for this new opportunity for him, for us.  It is an answer to a lot of prayers.  Hopefully next year we’ll be able to move closer to his work so he doesn’t miss so much of Creamie’s life because he is in the car.  Until then I am trying some new things to make my routine without him more bearable.  And you can bet that means a mandatory naptime for Creamielou.  Which is going to mean getting up (and going to bed) a LOT earlier.  Wish me luck, I”ll be back soon, like in September.  Soonish.

*If you want to follow me on instagram my username is pinksuedeshoe, or you can see all of my ig pics on flickr here. 

You can never go wrong with warm cookies and milk.  Scott had this cup (and matching plate and bowl) when he was a little boy, and it is the perfect dipping cup.  Oh, and she has a pretty vigorous dipping routine, hence the blur of cookie.

We made our own ketchup tonight.  I should have gone to the grocery store on Friday, but I’ve been putting it off.  We had everything in the fridge for delicious grilled burgers, except ketchup.  So we made our own.  I don’t think the recipe we used was a keeper, but it was a fun experiment.

And then I have spent the last hour making little flannel diapers for all of Creamie’s babydolls.  A little velcro (from Scott’s highschool sewing kit) and one too tiny for anything else flannel receiving blanket and I have four diapers for all her little dolls.  Well, three for the baby dolls and one for the moose.  That was a special request. (He is the brown blur in the corner).  I’m off to eat another cookie and make a grocery list for tomorrow.  Oh, and change baby diapers a million times before she falls asleep way past her bedtime.  I love Sunday nights at home.

I have two dreams involving more school.  One is to get a PhD and teach college.  The other is to take a few classes here and there and learn to be a pattern designer.  There is a community college nearby that has about a million classes I’d love to take in their fashion design department.  And lately that is what I’ve been thinking about.  Not necessarily leaning towards, but definitely thinking about it.

I don’t know if or when one of both of them will happen, but wouldn’t it be great to have classes and a stack of books with titles like these?  Sigh, August is practically here and it always makes me homesick for school.  Thanks for all the encouragement and feedback on my art journals.  I really should set aside more time each week to work play with these.  But I’m back to sewing during my freetime this week.  My 10 year highschool reunion is on Friday night and I need to make something to wear.  (And when I graduated from highschool my 18 year old self would have been shocked that would be something my 28 year old self would say.  And then do.)  I’ll be sure to post pictures.  Hope your weekend was lovely.

And this summer, I hope to do some more.  It is so satisfying to open my pantry and see a whole shelf full of jars of beautiful food.  I made strawberry jam a few weeks ago, but I have a lot of empty jars that need to be filled up before winter.

My mom found this Better Homes and Gardens Canning magazine, and I can’t wait to try out some of the recipes inside.  There are things like Tomato Basil jam and vanilla pickled sweet cherries and Sundried Tomato Pesto or Tomatillo Apple Salsa.  Not to mention the pictures are amazing.  After I flipped through hers I went to pick up a copy for myself, but they were sold out.  Thanks to my sweet friend Rose for finding one for me and picking it up!

So, do you can things?  It’s not as hard as people say it is, you just have to be careful is all.  And it is so satisfying to look at that row of delicious things to eat you made yourself.  It makes eating out of the pantry one of my favorite parts of the winter.